Shall Your Wish Be Granted
by Dorotheian
Summary: Watanuki has waited one hundred years; what he needs is to get out of the shop. The original Doumeki is dead, and his great-grandson has grown up. Yuuko's reincarnation must be out there somewhere. The consequences of Watanuki's last wish will be felt. Sequel to "In the Eyes of Doumeki Shizuka" and continuation of the original XxxHolic/Tsubasa story.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **The following story is a fan work derived from the manga/anime series _XxxHolic,_ which was originally written by CLAMP. I do not profit from this work of fan fiction. I do not own the characters who I am borrowing from _XxxHolic_. I do not write canon, I twist, change, and play with what is canon. Questions? No? Didn't think so...

I should probably mention that this story (and also "In the Eyes of Doumeki Shizuka," to be honest) in regards to XxxHolic was heavily influenced by several fanfics: "I'll Die Like This Too," by FarenMaddox, and "The Professor's Wife," by Foolish Mortal. In regards to Fai/Kurogane dynamics from Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles, "Lost in Translation," by Sunlight through Leaves, Faren Maddox's "Never Gonna Learn My Lesson," "Fortuna," by chi-of-ink, and "Crack of Dawn" by Klitch were most influential. They're all very good, I highly recommend reading them (warning: rating levels vary). Though this story is not exactly quite like any one of them, they influenced & modified my understanding of the series after I had finished reading it, and I owe their authors a debt of gratitude.

_If you don't like prologues, skip it and get to the meat of the story, although I can't promise that you won't miss something important. If you don't like the song lyrics, skip it. Enjoy what you enjoy._

* * *

**Shall Your Wish Be Granted: "_Anata no Negai, Kanaemashou"_**

**| Prologue |**

You hear footsteps on the porch, and march out, imperiously holding out one hand for the groceries, sending one last glance at the shop from over your shoulder, thinking only of what you are going to say to him _now—_he was a week late for your birthday, and _how does he find that in any way acceptable_? You haven't had a good talk in weeks, and now that he has lost your patience in showing consideration for his grief, you are finally angry enough to give him a good piece of what's really on your mind—

And then you stop and _look,_ and everything you had gathered up to say simply falls away. You freeze in your tracks and snatch your hand back, your breath expelled in one sharp, painful, involuntary exhale. You cradle your hand, curl and twist it protectively against your chest.

As soon as Doumeki stepped through the door, you knew something was wrong.

He looked as hale as ever. No one else would ever suspect. You stared at him in horror, transfixed, knowing what you felt and yet utterly unable to understand what you knew—what you felt—how could this be—

"Watanuki, you know I am going to die." The stoic old man with silver balding hair lifts a cigarrette to his mouth and breathes out, and then he scrubs it out quickly. He's been smoking tobacco since Kohane died—you could smell it on his breath before, but this is the first time he's done it in front of you. It probably seems unnecessary to fear its slow, stealthy ill effects in his old age, when everyone is dying around him anyway. It is probably a comfort, to him. His smoke wafts the same scent that his grandfather Haruka preferred all those years ago, or as close to that scent as modern brands of tobacco can come: eighty years after Haruka's death, he still remembers the exact musty smell. Doumeki's face has hardly changed, but now he looks older than Haruka does in your dreams these days. Older than _Haruka_...

You don't say a word, pinching the sleeve of your kimono between your fingers as great fear crashes over you like a wave. You might be having trouble breathing.

So this is the end.

Something must have shown on your face. "Watanuki—" Doumeki reaches out in concern. It feels like his hand is moving in slow motion, swimming towards your shoulder. Then it reaches, and the moment crashes back into the present.

"Hey..._what...?_" you say weakly, uncomprehending. In your confusion and shock, you can't find the words. "Doumeki?"

"Watanuki? Are you all right? _Watanuki_?" Doumeki's face wavers before your eyes. You can't move, can't speak. Just—just barely, you manage to twitch your head from side to side. With both hands now, he shakes you by the shoulders. Physically you are young, and he is old and slightly weakened by age, but he is still the stronger of you both. "Watanuki, it's all right. It's all right. You can see it on me, can't you?" He looks at you, brow furrowed. "As soon as I walked in, you knew. That it's my time."

He holds you upright by both shoulders as you sag backwards, chin dipping until it touches your collarbone, lost in misery. You knew what you saw, but it couldn't be true. It was not sickness, an overshadowing of ill health, or any ailment of the body. There was no accident waiting to happen. There was nothing to explain why the cold, icy, vacuous aura of death dogged the footsteps of a pure one such as Doumeki. There was no cause. As such it was a thing contrary to the concept of natural _hitsuzen_, a perversion of fate, and it was irreversible.

Unless it was a thing he had _chosen, _of his own accord.

Doumeki— If he _knows_— This is not nothing.

He gingerly sets you back on your feet, and releases you cautiously, watching carefully for any waver or sign to threaten that you are about to fall again. "Are you afraid?" Doumeki asks, hesitant to breach the distance between you.

_Yes._

It's all you can feel. Your hands clench. But your fear will make no difference to what is going to happen. "I can't—I can't stop you," you say haltingly.

Doumeki briefly makes a face that is both cranky and impatient. "Of course not," he says, dismissive. His cold expression says, _l__ike I would forget what you pulled after the Spider's Grudge incident. I'm not so stupid as to give you an opportunity to sacrifice yourself, even to save me._

"But this isn't natural, you know," you say, in a faraway monotone. "That is..._I_ know."

He squints.

"_Something's_ not right, but I can't stop it." You shiver. "This isn't—you didn't—"

"Didn't what?" Something in his voice sounds resigned. Waiting for you to catch up.

"You didn't ask me...didn't ask me to do any..." The words won't come. You shudder again. "_Why_? How _could_ you?" you whisper. _This isn't some thing you should decide yourself! _"You know I...I could have..."

"There wasn't anything you could have done." _Meaning_ _i__t was on purpose. _"I made a deal," Doumeki continues.

Your face bleaches of color. "What." _He didn't!_ "What deal?" Sick dread, worse than fear, seeps into your stomach.

"There is only one way to ensure that someone takes care of you." He glances away. Doumeki lifts the cigarrette to his lips, then lets it drop; he looks into your eyes. "It is a family matter, Watanuki," he says, at his most direct. "A bit of family knowledge passed down." His eyes look soft, but also wary.

"That's a spirit—" you start. "But what did you offer— But _how_—"

"If the liaison is one of choice, and the bargaining terms of the exchange is sufficient, then there are circumstances that will allow what is necessary to take place, even though I am a purifying exorcist. My instructions were specific, and they worked only as they would for one with my ancestry."

"But—"

"Watanuki, trust me." _As if._ Doumeki sighs. "I cannot tell you any more. Before she passed, Kohane told me this was the way things had to be. It was her last dream of the future. So that I could come back. That was the plan."

"What?" you say faintly. _She—she—_Kohane_ did? _This feels like betrayal.

"It won't be long, Watanuki. I'll be back," he says, ever-patient.

"But you're dying...except you're...I mean, you're _going_ to die..." you blubber.

"While _y__ou're_ waiting for Yuuko. I'm the only one left. I'd be dying soon, anyway, of old age, or cancer. Only a little while ago I learned that my eldest grand-daughter is having a baby boy. You can't or won't take care of yourself, so I'll come back for you." He says it matter-of-factly. "Surely you can see it is better this way, for the old to make way for the new."

"You _can't_," you insist, uselessly._  
_

"But you are doing _this_, and so I have _done," _Doumeki growls, and for a long moment he outright glares at you with undisguised anger and frustration—and then he visibly calms. It is eerie to watch. How long has he held these feelings inside of himself, while you never suspected? "_My_ part. I've decided." He said it with such dark, deadly firmness that it immediately ruled out all possibility of compromise. _Don't you understand? I did this because of YOU._

There was nothing else to say, because you never could convince each other. And you never saw eye to eye. That was the one thing that never seemed to change. Right now, there's nothing you can do, yourself, to change this. If it was by his own will, then the change is irreversible, and he will not allow it.

At a loss for knowing what else to do, you bring out the wine from your stores and open it for Doumeki. Out on the front porch, the two of you sit and drink it in silence. It doesn't feel like either a commemoration or a farewell, nor like anything else. The aftertaste of the bottle tastes sour, empty of meaning, holding nothing but the dry taste of alcohol. You didn't check what you grabbed from storage but you suspect that even if it had been your best vintage, it wouldn't have mattered. Neither of you say anything for a while.

"You will never be _left alone_," Doumeki says suddenly, his voice oddly clear; it has to be on purpose. But you don't know why. This has to be a lie. "Not again." Yes, _yes_, it is a lie. It must be.

The wind whuffles past your ears, blocking them from sound, blowing away all of Doumeki's next words, the ones that are probably intended to be conciliatory, explaining. Your heart is busy breaking. Your mind is too full to take in anything but the fear and darkness that has engulfed your future. You struggle to put your feelings in some kind of order, to prioritize them in some kind of noble hierarchy, but it is impossible because each one, once examined, stems from selfishness at its root, feeding your neediness, your greed, your insecurity in this moment in a vicious, tainted cycle.

Dimly you realize that you should be angry at Doumeki on principle for daring to take his own life, but there is no fire in you to summon on that score. All your energy is concerned with your own well-being. There is no question— _If he does this it will surely kill you. _The threat clings to your weak survival instinct, pinches and pokes it until flares into desperate life. It is a despicable, a horrible, hateful thing; the panic it presses down on you looms so large in your head that you can come up with no other logical reason for why what Doumeki has done is so wrong. Only that it is wrong because it _hurts,_ and it hurts _you, _and right now that is the only thing you can see.

For whose sake has he done it? How can he claim that he has done this because of you, for you? This is _not what you wanted!_ Doesn't he _know_ that? Clearly it is not for his _own_ sake, but who else could it be for? This is pain, this is pure agony_, _what he has done. Old and familiar, bitter anger clangs the bars of its cage in your skull and lets them ring: _How can he claim to know what I need and yet do this to me? If he could think of doing this then he must never have known me at all! If this is the way he deals with me, l__et him rot with his choice!_

But the truth. You lift your head, flick your tongue over your chapped lips, and your mouth opens: _I will miss you. _The brittle words won't come out, like all the times you wanted to thank him and couldn't. This is the same, in some strange way. Except this time, instead of confusion holding you back, it is a choking despair. Your head lowers under the weight of the words you should say, but they will not come. All of your coaxing and pleading and begging has no power. Silent tears flow without cease as you rock back and forth on your heels. _Don't do this, don't do this, don't die, don't leave me—_

Late that night, unable to coax another response from you, he leaves.

A week later, he dies of a mysterious illness that you know was explained away by his family as a freak heart attack. He was eighty-five, and ailed of no known diseases.

For fifteen years, that's how it was. He must have made arrangements. Just as before, food arrived on your doorstep once a week, and not a soul but customers and spirits came. Those fifteen years were lonely, and you don't like to remember them. They felt like one long, long, long day that never seemed to end, that never felt better or different or even any worse. That day went on, and on, and on, while you slept. Yuuko was still a wish made on the wind. You'd almost forgotten the reason why you were still there, waiting; forgotten about the world outside. The shop shrank, constricted, and the garden walls grew thicker.

You never saw the end in sight. One day it was over, and you were still waiting. The kid perched on your doorstep was fifteen; and his name was also Doumeki Shizuka. From then on, he was with you. You didn't know how he got there, but he was there. Doumeki's promise, the one you never even asked him to make, that you didn't want him to make—whether knowing or not, Shizuka was the one who kept it.

Things changed. The timbers of the shop didn't creak or moan as they had, and the rafters didn't seem to loom so low, nor the rooms feel as dark, damp, and cramped as before. Your world expands inch by inch, little by little. Someday you will see the face of the sun again. Someday, you will re-enter Time.

* * *

_As if I were a bloodsucker o__f your kindness,_

_I feel your sentiments stick to my skin.__  
_

_If the promise we made in that place—_

_Even if it never comes to be,_

_Surely I will not let go of your hand._

_You smiled at me so kindly,_

_As if your thoughts were in a far away world._

_Yet here I am, a liar, all alone,_

_And I am ever only dreaming._

_—"_Manatsu no Yoru no Yume" (Shikao Suga) [translation]

* * *

Author's Note: So, how does it feel to be in Watanuki's head for a change, huh? It's just for the prologue. The rest of the story will be told in third person. (If you beg for more I might be able to arrange something, though.)

Though Doumeki knows something has to be done to change the path Watanuki is on, he doesn't know what to do. Finally the opportunity presented itself to do something—not to solve anything, but to work towards a resolution without resorting to the use of the egg which isn't needed yet. He chooses to trust in his "future self" and the catalyst of his own death (rather like Akira Takizawa's decision to erase his memories at the end of _Eden of the East _and trust in his soul knowing what to do, now that I think about it). So he did it. And the plan succeeded—in a way.

Watanuki will be struggling to understand this decision for a long time. Doumeki gave Watanuki a taste of his own medicine. There were reasons and reasons and reasons, some selfish, some helpful, some vengeful, but: the "medicine" was bitter. Watanuki doesn't really grasp the "medicine" part of it, nor does he realize that he did nearly the same thing to Doumeki, and that hurt would remain toxic to them both. This was by no means the perfect solution to the dilemma of Watanuki (but Watanuki _would_ find a way to counter methods that were any kinder; he does makes things hard for himself).

The singer Shikao Suga's voice _is_ Watanuki's voice for me. Funnily enough, the association is even stronger than the one between Watanuki and his voice actor's.

**My short story "Unending Winter" takes place between this prologue and the next chapter, if you prefer reading chronologically. Be warned, it is still being written.**


	2. Chapter 1

**| Chapter 1 |**

* * *

_It is night, blackest night where life sleeps, cold and untouched by heat or light. There is only beauty, the beauty of impossibly distant blinking starfire._

_A star fizzles, snuffed out; slowly the dust reassembles, a beautiful cloud of red, pink and purple, swirling together, compressing, and then—a spark reignites._

"_Even the immortal stars are reborn in due time," explains the voice of a woman he once knew well, from behind his left ear, as if she waits just behind his shoulder. He turns his head, searching for her face even as she pulls away. He spins around but finds nothing but a breeze and a butterfly flickering its wings in the wind next to the bleeding _sakura. _Here, the place where he once said what he hadn't quite realized was goodbye. This place of wishes and dreams and nightmares from which he never left, where he has waited. The darkness closes in, coiling closer and closer, shutting off the vision as it once shut him away from Yuuko._

* * *

Watanuki's eyes open and his eyelids flicker. He shifts on the couch. Blinking, he searches for the light and, by the quality of the light, for the time of day. And the answer comes. It is a winter morning. The light is misty and grey. Sometimes Watanuki doesn't wake up until late afternoon.

_Immortal stars…reborn. _He sits up, puts on his glasses, rubs his eyes, and remembers his dream. It isn't fair, he thinks. Regret is already sinking deeper into his chest. It really isn't. She's come back, and it's like nothing has happened; he's still left behind, way behind her. That part of him hasn't changed at all.

But he can never let Doumeki know he thinks that — no, not Doumeki anymore; the problem now is Doumeki's great-grandson, Shizuka. But the two are enough alike that Watanuki expects that they would react the same way to such a thought, if they heard it. They would both nod silently, and turn their faces away, and hide their frustration, and do everything they could to make him feel like he was doing something wrong without needing to say a single word. And yet, their disapproval is a heavy thing.

_How can I believe the time is now? And yet Doumeki was reborn, in his great-grandson no less. Perhaps it is like that._

_Yuuko-san…_

The loneliness catches him off-guard again. Watanuki stands up, swaying, and gazes at the videotape that he keeps stowed away in one corner of the living room, thinking. He's had it ever since Shizuka brought it back from the job with the Inari practitioner. He doesn't even need to look at it anymore. He has Yuuko's simple message completely memorized. He remembers now. He sees her lips move, he hears the girl's breath shape two simple words: _"Tadaima, Watanuki_._"_ I'm home.

The wishing shop business was not about making life fair, was it? No. No. The opposite, if anything… That much he had learned while he was still young and working for Yuuko…

Watanuki takes a step, and he strides through the house towards the kitchen. Carelessly, his left foot knocks into Mokona, rousing the _kuromanju_ from sleep. He keeps walking and slides open the _shoji_ slider that leads to the hallway. Mokona, not upset in the slightest, gets up to her usual tricks. Mokona patters after Watanuki on tip-toe rabbit feet and slips into the hall behind Watanuki before he can close the _shoji_. He doesn't notice her until she bounces up on the counter and announces what she wants for breakfast, loudly enough that she surprises him into almost dropping one of the pans.

For a moment Mokona pads back and forth on the counter, guiltily pressing down her ears, but her moods change quickly. Half a minute later she brightly bounces up to his ear and taunts him, "Betcha never let Shizuka see you so clumsy!"

"Oh, shut up… You pork buns are always too noisy in the early morning. What'd you say you wanted for breakfast again?" Watanuki asks absentmindedly.

Mokona shouts, "Saké!"

Watanuki sighs. Mokona never skips an opportunity to drink, even if she never gets drunk. She's too like her master in that way. The bottle fairy tendency was one thing about Yuuko that Watanuki certainly _does not miss_. "In the morning? Request denied," Watanuki replies. He takes out his white apron from one of the drawers, lifts it over his neck and ties the waist securely in place.

"Hn-nn!" Mokona cries happily. "Fish sticks!"

Watanuki simply shakes his head. "_Breakfast_, Mokona. Or _nutritious_ food."

Mokona chirps, hops like a bird, and finally does a backflip. "Omelet!"

"As you wish," Watanuki replies, pretending to sound bored. He quickly fetches all the ingredients and starts cooking. Mokona creeps closer to the stove in order to watch. Disinterestedly, Watanuki warns, "Keep out of there, Mokona. You'll get burned."

Mokona pouts. "Mokona never gets burned," Mokona says, but retreats slightly nevertheless, and lowers her ears so they won't get in Watanuki's way.

"You mean, Mokona has never been burned _before_," Watanuki tells the _kuromanju_ pointedly.

Mokona ignores this. "_Nee, nee_, Watanuki, Watanuki. Shizuka-kun is coming today." Mokona nudges Watanuki.

"And how do you know that?" Watanuki wonders aloud. The omelet has finished cooking. He turns off the stove, cuts the omelet into fourths, and puts it on plates.

"I heard him over the phone! Hee-hee!" Mokona bounces from rabbit foot to rabbit foot. Watanuki allows Mokona to nibble on the nearest plate's omelet.

"Mokona, please don't answer the phone for me." It's a futile request.

"Aww…. But you were sleeping! And then you wouldn't know…"

"You could have told me _yesterday_," says Watanuki in exasperation."But speaking of keeping in contact, you don't suppose you could connect me to Syaoran?"

"_Hai!_" says Mokona cheerfully, and the blue gem on Mokona's forehead begins to glow.

* * *

Kurogane stares into Fai's mismatched eyes—one blue like ice, like cloud, and the other one an otherworldly, _hungry_ gold, bright as the heavens. "It's time," he says hoarsely. "Isn't it."

Fai sits lightly in his lap. "Yes," says Fai, but he makes no move.

Kurogane grunts. "If you say so. Vampire. _Kyuuketsuki._ Do your thing."

"You know I can't do that," Fai whispers, closing his eyes. He has to get into the right mindset, the right mental switch. But then he finds it. Quite suddenly, he sags bonelessly against Kurogane's body, like a human doll.

Kurogane catches Fai and guides his fall downwards, neatly catching Fai's sweaty forehead against the crook of his elbow. "Drink," he hisses, cupping one large hand across the back of Fai's skinny neck. Kurogane is ready to forcefully press Fai's fangs into his skin, if necessary. It shouldn't be, but sometimes Fai's mind interferes too much with his instincts. Fai usually waits too long before he admits that he needs to feed, exhausting himself. If Kurogane had his way, he would insist on regular feeding times, but this was the compromise they reached. Fai has the final say on when it's time to feed—and Kurogane must respect it. As a principle it makes sense. But when the principle applies to Fai, Kurogane worries about the mage's absurd lack of self-preservation. As it is, Fai needs to feed maybe once a week.

Today Fai's body is cooperative. When his brain registers the beating of blood beneath Kurogane's skin, his lips part. Reflexively, his fangs bare and extend, sinking slowly into Kurogane's pale flesh. Fai's hands dart out and squeeze Kurogane's arm to get a better grip; his fingernails bite into Kurogane's skin.

That done, Kurogane lets out a deep breath. He allows the arm to which Fai is currently attached to fall, heavy and lifeless, to the table. His other hand, trembling with strain, strokes the mage's blond locks soothingly.

As always, Kurogane feels the inexorable, magnetic pull that Fai's sucking fangs exert on his blood that causes his heart to quicken into overtime, and Kurogane has to struggle not to resist the backwards flow. Right now, while Fai is feeding, Kurogane feels he is at his absolute weakest. It's demoralizing. Years ago, the loss of his strength (however temporary) might have been the worst price he could think of. Yet when it came down to it, he paid that price to save Fai's life. Kurogane has some compensation in that he knows the blood he loses will replenish itself faster than in a normal human. In a fight, Kurogane probably has a higher chance of surviving blood loss that might kill a normal human. Fai isn't likely to think of that trade as fair, however. Kurogane takes care that the strain never shows.

Kurogane knows it is almost over when, as Fai finishes sucking, his lips relax around Kurogane's skin, and his tongue darts out to lick leftover smears of blood. The feeding done, Fai releases the crook of Kurogane's elbow and slowly straightens to drape himself over Kurogane's neck, where he rests, panting slightly, for a little while. And for his part, Kurogane also needs time to recover from the ordeal.

Finally Fai pushes himself away so he can have a look at Kurogane's face. "Kuro-pii, there's sweat on your forehead," he chuckles.

Kurogane sighs, about to push Fai away, but Fai stretches himself a little and with quick, catlike strokes of his tongue, licks the salt from his skin. Kurogane grunts. "You'd better get off now."

"Yeah," says Fai, and starts to slide off of Kurogane's lap when he sees the _shiromanju _Mokona watching them. In surprise, he nervously and hastily pulls himself back up, using the back Kurogane's neck as a lever. Kurogane growls, about to protest Fai's maltreatment of his body, but then he sees the _shiromanju_. Mokona hops onto the table, projecting a familiar image.

"_Tch_. It's the Witch's assistant. Watanuki," says Kurogane, finally, none too pleased. It's not Watanuki's fault that he happened to catch them in the middle of something intimate, but he is irritated.

Although it probably couldn't have been avoided. It's been a while since they last saw each other; Watanuki doesn't check on them as often as the witch used to, and he's mostly concerned with Syaoran and Sakura. On top of that, time doesn't flow regularly between their worlds.

A bit overcome with what he has just seen, Watanuki feels a trifle ill, although his years as the shopkeeper have taught him to hide it well. "Not the assistant anymore," he mutters, then clears his throat in a business-like manner. "I'm the shopkeeper."

Kurogane blinks. It's hard to believe that the witch is dead—he didn't see it happen. Syaoran told them, of course, and mentioned that Watanuki had taken up her post. But the witch was the one who supported their world travels, not Watanuki. He knows her, a little, but not this kid. In fact, it's downright strange to converse with Watanuki when he had so little to do with their actual quest but knew so much of it. Watanuki probably feels the same, which is why he doesn't check on them as often or memorably as Yuuko did… And, to be honest, unlike when they still traveled under the shadow of Fei-Wong Reed, they haven't needed his help or interference since they left Clow the first time.

Fai is the first to recover. "_So_…" he drawls, grinning mischievously. "How much did you see?"

"Wha—what?!" Kurogane tries to shove Fai off of his chest. Fai won't budge. Sensing this method is useless, Kurogane slackens on the pressure and Fai, giggling, snaps back to his chest like a rubber band. Fai looks— well, as genuinely carefree and happy as anyone has ever seen him, actually. It's hard to tell whether this is because of genuine affection for Kurogane or because he wants to tease Watanuki some more.

Watanuki's skin tinges a faint pink. He doesn't want to elaborate any more than he has to. He coughs into his hand. "Enough," he says. "I saw _enough_."

"Enough, he says." Kurogane stares Fai in the face. "Get off my lap."

Only Kurogane can say that line with such a straight face, Fai thinks, and makes a face. "Hmmphf," Fai grumbles, because his body feels heavy and he doesn't want to move. He carefully slides to the floor and once again rises again to his feet, only reeling a little. Kurogane grabs his arm by the elbow, just in case, so that he doesn't fall over. The rush of power from drinking blood, as Fai describes it, is so forceful that he has trouble adjusting to the flux in energy and power. But just because Fai derives energy from this power does not mean that the feeling is much better than being sick. He's never mentioned this to Kurogane. Kurogane can see for himself.

"Gentlemen, I have business with Syaoran," Watanuki announces.

Surprised, the two men look at him. Fai blinks. "That so? Didn't you know? He's with Princess Sakura right now," he says.

"Why's the _shiromanju_ with you, then?" Watanuki questions.

Fai and Kurogane exchange covert, guarded glances. It's Fai who speaks, again. "Actually…Syaoran's curse ended months ago, now. We thought he'd told you. Mokona is with us because we like to visit Syaoran once a month or so, but we're settled on…well. Where is '_here'_ again, Kurogane?" Fai peeks at the former ninja.

"Tagui," Kurogane supplies.

Fai makes a face. "Weird name, nice place. Strikes a happy balance between the worlds we both come from…"

Kurogane makes a negative noise, looks at Watanuki, and says, "He says that, but the synthetic meat the islanders eat here really gets on his nerves. I myself don't have a problem with it. What I have a problem with—" Quick as a flash, Fai slips behind Kurogane and claps one hand over Kurogane's mouth. Irritated, Kurogane twists his neck, forcing Fai's hand to slip just enough so he could speak "—mph, it's always so damn _sunny_—" Fai's hand drops away suddenly, and Kurogane stops talking to gape at him.

Fai leans closer to Kurogane. "The food is a really a _very_ small problem with this perfect country, Kurogane. You don't say you missed the snow, or something?"

Kurogane just frowns at him. "I don't expect you to agree with me about the necessity of snow, after living on Seresu." He shrugs. "I guess it's time to jump worlds again. Shall we? I was getting tired of this place."

"Let's go," Fai agrees, peeking at Watanuki.

"_Shiromanju_!" Kurogane calls. "Take us to Syaoran! Take us to the Kingdom of Clow!"

The white pork-bun Mokona Modoki squeaks, "_Hai_!" White Mokona opens its mouth and swallows up the two world-weary travelers before disappearing itself.

They arrive on Clow three feet away from the person they wanted to see, a couple of steps in front of the castle. The brown hair, the distinctively tattered cloak, the same sensible shoes and boots.

"Syaoran!" Watanuki calls, through Mokona, jerking forward a little with anticipation.

Syaoran turns to face them. He is smiling and his eyes are large and full with happiness. "Watanuki. Fai. Kurogane. I was just going in to see the princess." He bows slightly. _At your service_.

Fai grins back at him, and gestures airily to Syaoran. He puts one hand on Kurogane's shoulder and tows him into the palace. There is only one person that Watanuki really wants to see, after all.

"Is it true? Is it true that your price is over?" Watanuki presses him.

"Aye. Aye. Yes, it's true," Syaoran replies.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wasn't sure if you had also gotten out. You ought to have, but you never contacted me, and I know time moves funny for you. I didn't want to get your hopes up."

Well, though he doesn't like it, that at least makes sense. Watanuki changes the subject. "You don't look a hair over twenty-five," Watanuki marvels.

"I was lucky. Sakura is pleased that I won't be traveling well into old age. She was getting antsy and dropping hints everywhere that she wanted to start a family." Syaoran's smile is wan. "Mostly, it's that she thinks she's ready, but there are political reasons as well. On Clow, the crown princess does not become a Queen until she marries, and she's not considered secure in her role until she has children. That would give her the power to start making some badly needed changes in the country. Those problems weren't urgent enough, though, so we put marriage on hold while I was traveling for as long as we could. We got the married part down six months ago, when the terms of our wish expired. She's been happy and busy ever since. Speaking of age—you don't look a year past nineteen, although you must have been seventeen when your time stopped."

Although he had been feeling warm and happy for Syaoran, Watanuki's throat constricts suddenly. In his frozen, wide, staring eyes, Syaoran sees the strain immediately.

"It hasn't been the same for you, has it?"

Watanuki shakes his head.

"For how long?" Syaoran demands.

Watanuki bows his head and closes his eyes in something like shame. Here in front of Syaoran, he is unable to explain himself. All of his well-thought out reasons seem illogical, rationalized as compulsion, an irrational adherence to his wish to do something for a mysterious woman who did so much for him, but technically faded from life before Watanuki was born. From the outside—he knows—none of this makes any sense.

"How long?" Syaoran says again, insistent, his voice rising.

He can't lie. Not to him. "A—a hundred years. And a couple of months."

"Six months, I would bet." Syaoran clicks his tongue, folds his arms, grits his teeth. He's angry. "Sakura said the ripples from Clow's sorcery have finally dissippated throughout the universe."

Watanuki hangs his head.

"Your friends are dead, aren't they?" Now Syaoran's voice is cold. It had been hot before.

Watanuki nods. "All but—except for Doumeki's great-grandson. He's just like his great-grandfather." Watanuki laughs nervously.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You would interfere."

"I would never!" Syaoran denies it. "Dammit! I can't...!" Watanuki flinches and looks up. Syaoran looks close to tears. "I would never," Syaoran says, more quietly. "That's complete crap. Absolute…" he shakes his head. "I'll tell you what I _would_ have done. I would have come for you."

"Yes. And you would have tried to persuade me to take another path."

"Yes! So that you would _change your mind_!" Syaoran shouts. "We could have found a _better way_! We both knew that price wasn't right!"

Watanuki looks away.

"You shouldn't close your mind off to influences you don't like, Watanuki! What were you thinking? Your very life is bound up in your friends. Your _nakama_. Without them you are nothing. I _know_ what that is like. How could you…"

"I did. I won't regret it, Syaoran. If you want me to be happy, don't try to make me regret my decisions." Watanuki lifts his chin and his voice rises slightly. "The moment I begin to pity the path that my own life has taken, that is the moment when I have lost hope, and I can no longer live with myself."

Syaoran shudders and touches his forehead. "Okay. Okay. I get it." He sighs. "I'm sorry. I got carried away. We've all made hard decisions we don't want to think about…"

"Yes." Watanuki's voice is clipped.

Syaoran laughs quietly. "I guess I can't blame you for not wanting to open yourself up to attack from people that you trust."

Watanuki's reply is mild, almost deliberately so. "As long as you understand."

The words intended to placate Syaoran inflame him instead. Syaoran's head whips up and he locks blazing brown eyes with Watanuki, nostrils flared. "Oh, I _understand_." His tone is bitter and searing. _Don't misunderstand me: that doesn't make it any less unacceptable._

Watanuki raises his chin but says nothing.

Syaoran forces himself to stop and rein in his temper before he says another word. He's always had that peculiar ability to inflame or dampen the flame of his own emotion using his honor and his determination. It's one of the few ways he differs from Watanuki, who has never learned to bend his spirit to his purpose.

Syaoran squares his shoulders, calm. "This is why," he explains, voice low. "I didn't know if my traveling would ever let me go home to make a family with Sakura. I was happy to pay the price, but I wasn't sure how long I could hold out. I think I would have paid it even if I spent my whole life in expectation, thought it meant my own dearest wish never came true. So in that way I can understand you. But me, I—I never had to go through with that path. Maybe I was wrong about the future. Maybe I would have given up in fifty years; maybe I wouldn't. You did, and you faced that choice alone.

"That's why I'm angry with you, twin mirror of my soul. Your life is important to me, so I love you. What you chose that day was too damn sad. No one should have to go through that. But I didn't know exactly what would happen, so I couldn't do anything for you. And you made that choice for me. I would like to think that if I visited you, even for a little, then I could have made a difference and prevented some of your suffering." Syaoran's glinting warm brown eyes are no less flinty. "But you never gave me the chance."

"I'm sorry," says Watanuki, after a moment. "I didn't want you to sorrow."

"I love you, my brother." Syaoran wipes his eyes. "You are my responsibility, mine and Yuuko's. I just — I can't help but feel that I've failed you in some way up to now. That there was more I could have done."

"You haven't. You've done your best. I could never resent you, Syaoran." It's true they haven't spent that much time together—though over the years they've spoken more and more often through the Mokonas—but ever since Syaoran first impinged on his world, Watanuki knew a special person, a person he knew on an instinctive level he had never felt for any other, had entered his life and loved him. It was the same with Syaoran's wife, Sakura, but different; as if he had always known and been close to her, but there was no confusion that they were not the same person, only that Syaoran and Sakura belonged together as one puzzle piece fits into another.

Sometimes Watanuki found himself wondering what would happen if a Sakura walked into _his_ life. But it would never happen. His world's Sakura was his own mother, whom he doesn't remember.

Syaoran clears his throat, though his eyes are red. Watanuki knows he feels very strongly, but he also knows Syaoran can recover from the most astonishing losses with frightening aplomb. "What will you do next, Watanuki?" Syaoran asks. Already, Syaoran's shoulders are rising and falling as he breathes, guiding himself back to his center of calm.

"I'm still waiting for Yuuko."

"Why?"

Hesitantly, he says, "I promised. And—six months ago—she sent me a message. '_Tadaima—_I'm back,' she said."

"Well, what are you doing here? Go look for her!" Syaoran gestures for emphasis.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. That's what she wants you to do." Syaoran is definite.

"Oh." Watanuki blinks. That was all?

"Bring her home, she's saying," Syaoran says, a little too confidently. Now Watanuki isn't as certain, again.

"I thought maybe my price hadn't been fulfilled, and she wanted me to stay. To keep waiting."

Syaoran shook his head. "No. She's there. It's past time for me to say this: get on with your life, Watanuki."

"Yes. All right. Then it's decided; I will. Thank you, Syaoran." Watanuki makes a movement as if he's about to end the connection.

Syaoran leans forward urgently, before he can do so. "Wait, Watanuki! I forgot to tell you in all the confusion—Sakura's going to have a baby."

"She is?" Watanuki is surprised. "You didn't mention…"

He nods. "Yes. First try, see," he boasts. "We'll check on you when the baby has been born, probably in three months or so."

Watanuki smiles easily. "Come, then. You're always welcome. And thanks for telling me ahead of time… I must make something special for your child, so it will be ready for you." The connection is beginning to warp. "Don't worry about me. Everything will all be over soon."

Syaoran shakes his head, but lets him go. "Goodbye, Watanuki."

"Goodbye, Syaoran."

The light glowing within the red and blue jewels on the Mokonas' foreheads slowly fades, and the connection is gone.

* * *

Shizuka Doumeki walks in. Watanuki knows without even having to turn around. He hears the _shoji_ slide at the genkan, and the aura of the shop changes around him. Watanuki sometimes mistakes it for staleness and sterility before he finally figures it out — purity. Shizuka makes the very air seem sharper, fresher. Unerring as usual, Shizuka heads straight to the kitchen, and there he puts down his briefcase.

"Watanuki-sama."

Speech he had been expecting, but not the honorific. Watanuki starts, reflexively releasing the counter in front of him. "I told you not to call me that." Watanuki turns around.

Shizuka shrugs and his smile takes on a hint of smugness. "Yes. Yes, I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

Shizuka's slight smile fades as he turns pensive, listening sensitively to something in the air around him. "I felt like it," he says.

"That so," Watanuki replies, and pinches his lips together.

Shizuka looks up. He looks at Watanuki very hard. "I thought you'd be pleased with it today."

Granted, usually Watanuki would have felt a frisson of absurd pleasure to hear Doumeki's great-grandson call him that. Watanuki folds his arms and looks at the kitchen wall, to the side. "Not today," he sighs.

"Something happened, then."

"I suppose you could say that."

"Then why do you sound bitter?"

Ah, Doumeki Shizuka. So direct. Watanuki chuckles hollowly. "The former shopkeeper returned. Six months ago, now."

Shizuka blinks. "In May?"

"The Inari practitioner left a message for me on your video camcorder. You remember?"

"So that's what that was about."

Watanuki shakes his head. "No, not at all. That was just … the price."

Shizuka looks at him sharply. "Then you don't think that girl—"

"No, I don't. That's not her. She was just the messenger."

"Then what?"

"Syaoran says I should look for _her_."

"Syaoran?"

"Of course, you've never met him before." Watanuki falls silent, and then murmurs, almost to himself, "Granted, Doumeki never exactly met him, either." Watanuki raises his head.

Shizuka asks again, "Who is Syaoran?"

"He is—me; me, in a way, but from another world. We share the same birth name."

"Kimihiro, you mean?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "No, no, our true name. They say magicians must grant themselves a pseudonym, but I never had to do that. For a long time, my parents gave me my fake name to live by, to protect me, I didn't even know my true name until … never mind."

"I see…."

The two of them lapse into silence. Shizuka is the first to break it. "Are you going to get me something to eat?"

Watanuki blinks. "I forgot about your discerning-but-bottomless Doumeki stomach. Ah, but these are mine, and Moro's, and Maru's…" He looks at where the omelet plates had been. Two are gone—Maru and Moro must have sneaked in behind his back while he was talking to Syaoran. Only one is left. His. "Oh, never mind, then. What would you like, Shizuka?"

"Whatever you're having."

"What kind of omelet, then?"

Shizuka shrugs. "The best."

"The best," Watanuki repeats, a little incredulously. How can he live up to the best? That's a tall order. Mentally he starts remembering Doumeki's likes and dislikes, and he starts creating a mental list of foods to use. He crosses to the refrigerator and begins rummaging.

"Your own food's probably cold," Shizuka notes.

Watanuki shrugs. He can hardly taste it anyway.

"What will you do, then?"

"What?" Watanuki pops his head out of the fridge.

"About the former shopkeeper. What will you do?"

"I don't know." Watanuki frowns and keeps pulling out ingredients. He crosses to the counter and assembles them in a long line. He prepares the cooking pan. He cracks the eggs, and expertly applies the cooking flame.

"You aren't going to follow Syaoran's advice?"

"I don't know." Watanuki throws in a couple of ingredients, another couple of eggs, and lets the batch sizzle. "The problem is _hitsuzen_."

"If it's meant to happen, then you'll find her if you go looking. Or perhaps you'll find her if you stay here."

"Exactly," says Watanuki. "So what should I do?"

"Whichever feels most natural," Shizuka replies.

Watanuki laughs under his breath. _Ha._ No, that doesn't narrow it all down at all, does it. He wants to pursue Yuuko. But he's afraid that his own wish will terminate if he leaves the shop to go outside—

"It's been six months already, you say," Shizuka comments, tapping his fingers on one of the cabinets. "Perhaps she hasn't got a wish."

Watanuki whips around. "But what if she—if she hasn't got a—" He freezes, looking horrified. The store. She can't see it. "Now why didn't I—" His vision flickers, and he trips and begins to fall...

Shizuka reaches out and grabs both of Watanuki's shoulders, and props him up while Watanuki simply closes his eyes and breathes until he isn't dizzy anymore. When he opens his eyes, Shizuka waits for his signal, and then lets him go. Still somewhat unsteady, Watanuki stands on his own two feet.

"Eggs," says Shizuka, flicking his fingers at the mess. He knows when they're in the delicate stage. He doesn't like any burnt parts.

Watanuki checks them, turns off the stove and prods the omelet tentatively with a spatula. It looks okay. He carefully scrapes it off the pan and onto yet another plate, rummages in another drawer for some clean chopsticks, and hands it to Shizuka.

Shizuka takes his plate, picks up Watanuki's, pushes Watanuki into the living room and makes him sit down. Shizuka digs in right away while Watanuki sits, staring into space. Finally, Shizuka prods him, "Aren't you going to eat?" and at his quiet behest, Watanuki picks up his quarter-omelet and twists it in half with his chopsticks. He still doesn't take a bite. He's still thinking.

"I'll go looking for Yuuko, then," Watanuki murmurs.

"Aye."

"Thanks. I wouldn't have thought of that myself…"

Shizuka has a funny smile on his face. He _is_ more expressive than Doumeki. Must be his grandmother Kohane-chan's influence—yes, it does remind Watanuki of her smile. "That's what friends are for," Shizuka says.

Watanuki nods, accepting that, and takes a bite. They eat in silence for a while, so the only sound is that of utensils scraping on the plate.

Finished, Shizuka lowers his plate and looks Watanuki in the eyes. "It is such a simple thing, but it was indeed the best. My great-grandfather didn't lie. Watanuki-sama, you really know how to cook."

For a moment, Watanuki just stares at him. Already, he has forgotten, and it takes him a minute to remember who Shizuka really is. His protest is a little late. "I told you not to call me that," he protests, but at the last he forgets his dismay and smiles suddenly, because he can't help smiling at the earnest folly of his younger years.

* * *

_How should we dream of dreams?_

_I can't stand this, always hesitating, anymore._

_What I can do for you, that no one else can do?_

_Every day I am so irresponsible, I cannot undertake this task._

_How should we search for tomorrow? _

_I can no longer bear always hanging my head as it is._

_Which of the lights in your room will be lit?_

_All I have is my own footsteps, though they falter._

_—_"Adayume" / "Selfish Dream" (Shikao Suga) [translation]


	3. Chapter 2

**| Chapter 2 |**

* * *

Shizuka turns the last corner on his way to the wishing shop and folds his umbrella, not wanting to hit the fence or the sides of the wishing shop. It might have unexpected effects on Watanuki's wards. Shizuka doesn't mind if he gets a little wet, so long as he keeps moving in this freezing weather… The rain droplets are small, and for the most part they fall softly, but when the wind kicks up, they really sting.

Shizuka hops up onto the porch and turns around, casting a quick glance at the road and the houses on the opposite side of the street, which might be watching him.

There's a girl standing there on the street. She catches his gaze and stares at him with wide brick-red eyes, apparently just as surprised to see a person there as he was; and then she turns and walks away. Her sleek ponytail, black as ebony and grown so long that it reaches the backs of her knees, sways in the morning wind.

There's something strange about her, but Shizuka can't put his finger on it. He can't think what could have been. Her bearing? Her clothes? The way she stared at him? He supposes he might seem strange to others, standing in the middle of a grassy lot that appears to the general public that doesn't have business with the shop. He shrugs and ducks into the shop.

* * *

After breakfast, they don't talk about anything very serious. Shizuka brought some DVDs he thinks Watanuki might be interested in watching; they end up playing a game and whiling the day away. And finally it's afternoon, and Shizuka suddenly feels like it's important not to delay anymore.

"Watanuki."

"Yes?"

"I have a feeling," says Shizuka.

"Like what?"

"Just a feeling. Come outside."

"To the garden? It's raining." Watanuki looks out. Yes, raining. It was overcast this morning, and sprinkling a little later on when Shizuka came in, but it has been pouring for over an hour now.

Shizuka hesitates. "No. To the street."

"I'd be leaving the shop, then," Watanuki says softly. He isn't exactly objecting, but…

"Yes."

Watanuki sighs. "Now?"

"If you want to find her, you'd have to take this step eventually, Watanuki. Anyway, I'm here right now. Let's get this over with. If nothing happens, then nothing will, and that's _hitsuzen,_ but at least we should try, don't you think?" Watanuki nodded stiffly. He was really very easy to read, thought Shizuka. "It's scariest the first time. You haven't been out of this shop in a long time. I know; I understand. That's why we should do it now, while I'm here to help you." Shizuka stands, and holds out his hand.

Feeling broken and weary, Watanuki also pulls himself into a stand, and every so slowly he places his hand in the palm of Shizuka's hand, and they twine fingers.

Shizuka gives him a nod and pulls him through the house.

About halfway through the hall, Watanuki's throat threatens to close up. "We should get a—a jacket—" he coughs, and drags Shizuka the other way, to the closets, and there he roots through the clothes one-handed because Shizuka won't let go. He puts it on — Shizuka remembers his own jacket and snags it with his loose hand — and they make it to the _genkan_ before Watanuki remembers that he needs socks, because if it's raining, then clogs or sandals aren't the best idea of the day…

"Just come out into the rain," Shizuka says. He has very little inflexion or expression, like Doumeki, but somehow Watanuki knows that he's trying to sound coaxing.

Watanuki shivers and fiddles with the fastenings of his jacket, and then almost wrenches his hand out of Shizuka's when he wheels around to find the socks and put them on. And the umbrella. And the mittens. And the scarf. Seeing that Watanuki's hands will be busy for a while, Shizuka releases him, but as soon as Watanuki is done with his tasks he catches Watanuki's hand again and securely twines their fingers together. His hands are so quick and firm that Watanuki catches his breath.

"Watanuki, I don't think we'll be out more than five minutes," Shizuka says patiently. "Do you really need anything else?"

Watanuki looks at the ground and shuffles his feet. "Probably not," he mumbles, shamefaced, and squeezes Shizuka's hand for reassurance. "You're probably right. The first time is the hardest."

"Are you ready?"

Watanuki takes a deep breath and nods.

Shizuka slides open the door, and they step through; Shizuka slides it shut again, opens the umbrella, and leads Watanuki to the street. Watanuki can't help slouching like a cat under the dripping rain. If he had ears, they would be flat to the sides. They reach the street and Shizuka stops; Watanuki bumps into him, then steps aside, so he is just barely under the umbrella.

The rain sleets down, and rolls across the street in sheets.

Watanuki is already completely miserable. "Are you sure about this, Shizuka?!" He has to speak more loudly than he is accustomed to be heard over the pounding water. "How long?"

Shizuka replies but Watanuki couldn't hear him clearly.

"What?"

Shizuka touches Watanuki's shoulder. "Soon enough—" he says, enunciating, and then he sees what he has been waiting for; the rest of the words stick to the roof of his mouth. He swallows thickly.

A girl turns the corner and dashes forward on their street, holding her school briefcase above her head for an umbrella, splashing water every which way. Her long hair is plastered to her back.

She's about to pass them when Shizuka steps forward suddenly and holds out the umbrella. His sleeve dampens steadily as he waits. "Here. Use this," he says firmly.

The girl skids, trying to the stop on the slippery ground. She quickly regains her balance, however, and runs back. She clasps the handle of the proffered umbrella but doesn't take it just yet. She slips the briefcase from her shoulders, and lets it hang to the ground in her hand.

Her eyes are wide with surprise, and a little anxiety. "Is it all right? I'm soaked already, you know," the girl says quietly, panting a little. "And you two are dry. It would be—a waste." And she raises her blood-red eyes, and takes the two of them in. "Wouldn't it?" She's right. There isn't very much of her that isn't somewhat wet.

Her eyes find Watanuki's, and Watanuki locks eyes with her and cannot look away, mesmerized. It is Shizuka who replies, insisting, "Take it," but the girl doesn't break her gaze on Watanuki's eyes. Unusually bold…

"I was not going to stay out here long. Come and bring it back another day," says Watanuki faintly. "Do you come by often?"

"I just transferred to this school," said the girl, looking at Watanuki carefully. "I've come this way since the new year."

"Congratulations on the New Year," Watanuki replies, stuttering a little, a bit dazed, and he bows, breaking eye contact at last. These are semi-automatic words he hasn't said in a very long time to anyone other than Shizuka or Doumeki, words that gradually over time had lost more and more of their meaning, until now.

"Let this year also be a good one," the girl replies reflexively, bowing. Her eyes narrow when the silence stretches and she senses that this means something beyond a single greeting. "You aren't an ordinary person, are you," she says finally.

The right idea finally occurs to Watanuki. A test. "Do you see this place behind us?" Watanuki asks, and stands aside so she can see beyond the umbrella.

She tilts her head and frowns, looking past him. "It's a house. With crescent moons, isn't it? It's an odd one. I had been wondering. It doesn't seem like the rest of the city here, so I was curious. It seems strangely familiar—a trace of dejá vù—but it's wrapped in so many different times and places—can you see that—?"

Watanuki says, "Yes, I see. Thank you…" and moves back to his spot beside Shizuka.

"Do you live here? You and…him?" The girl flicks her eyes at Shizuka.

"Yes, this is my home and workplace. He's a friend," Watanuki replies. "He lives at the family Buddhist temple. You must have heard of the Doumeki family."

An unusually strong gust of wind blows by. The girl staggers a little; her eyes widen when she looks back up. "I've passed by there, but I've never seen anyone."

"Someone is always there. Come visit sometime after eight at night. I'll make tea," Shizuka says quietly. "It's good to know one's neighbors."

"I don't even know your names," the girl says, confused. "But…" She clamps her lips down on her next words and shakes her head violently. This is not the place to reveal her feelings, feelings that are as alien to her as if they belonged to another person.

"Ah, I'm so sorry. _Hajimemashite. _My name is Watanuki Kimihiro, and this is Doumeki Shizuka."

"I am Kochoushu Tekona. Kochoushu is written with the characters for 'butterfly' and 'master.'"

Watanuki can't help himself; he physically flinches. Shizuka looks at him askance. Watanuki shrugs him off.

"I should get going," Kochoushu says awkwardly, lowering her breathtaking eyes. She hefts the school briefcase, takes the umbrella, backs up, and resumes sprinting down the street.

Watanuki rounds on Shizuka. "You _knew _that was going to happen!"

"I had an inkling. I think—I think remembered."

"Well, _I_ don't remember doing anything of the kind!" Watanuki grouses.

"No, it must have been a recollection of my great-grandfather's. I know only you could really tell if it was her or not. But she seemed to sense something also— We should go inside; you already look like you're about to get a chill. And you almost fainted earlier today." Right on time, Watanuki sneezes. Shizuka frowns and steers Watanuki back into the wishing shop by the elbow.

"But we were right on time—"

"I often visited you after school when I was young, didn't I? Since I turned fifteen, I think, half the time I went home to the temple, and half the time I came here to keep you company. I still remember how long it took to get here from there, and when I usually arrived…"

"I see," says Watanuki softly, rubbing his eyes.

Shizuka opens the front door and ushers Watanuki back inside. "She barely took her eyes off you."

"I know," Watanuki says softly, then looks down as Shizuka helps him out of his coat. "On some level, she's aware. But I'm not sure how much."

* * *

The next day, there's a knock at the door. Awakened early from his nap, Watanuki gets up and opens the door groggily, and there's the girl, Kochoushu Tekona, holding Shizuka's umbrella out to him. He doesn't take it back just yet.

"Hello. I came to return this, Watanuki-san."

"Yes. It's actually Shizu— Doumeki-san's," Watanuki corrects himself.

"Right...But you'll give it to him, won't you? Should I come back another day?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "No, you may leave it here. I will give it to Doumeki-san myself when he comes back."

"Okay." The girl turns to leave.

"Wait a second. Don't go yet." Watanuki leans out the door. "I'm sorry, I'm still sleepy. I forgot— I have to ask you an important question."

"And what would that be?" asks Kochoushu warily, reluctantly turning back.

"I'm about to tell you something very strange. That question I asked you before—I wanted to know whether you sensed what this place is, and you did. This house is a wishing shop—a place that is here, and _not_ here, in reality. Most people can't see it, but you can." Watanuki leans on the doorway. "Therefore, you must have a wish."

Kochoushu shuffles her feet. "I actually thought so from the first. This place is—transparent, if you don't look properly. Sometimes I can see both realities at once. It's a little dizzying. Are you a magic-worker?"

"Yes, I'm a dream-seer. And I have a few other techniques as well. My official title is keeper of this wishing shop."

"I see," says Kochoushu.

"Do you have a wish?"

"What kind of wish?"

"I can't even begin to classify the kinds of wishes people bring to me," Watanuki says, and chuckles. "So I can't answer. Only you can."

"Hmm." Kochoushu hesitates.

"Why don't you come in and talk about it with me?" Watanuki suggests gently.

"All right."

Watanuki leads Kochoushu to a table, and has Maru and Moro fetch them snacks and drinks from the kitchen that he had prepared just before he took his nap.

Kochoushu sips her tea and watches Watanuki with an interested, curious scrutiny that's started to make him kind of uncomfortable.

Watanuki leans forward, elbow on the table, resting his chin on his bent left wrist. "You must have some idea…of what you want, or need."

Kochoushu's mauve eyes move back to her cup of green tea. "It's hard to say."

"Take your time."

She takes a few big gulps of tea, sets the cup down. Watanuki refills it for her.

Her eyes flicker left; then back to Watanuki; then left again.

"What is it?" Watanuki asks, resignedly.

"You can see spirits, can't you," she says, glancing sideways.

Watanuki nods. "Yes. I couldn't do this job otherwise."

"Then—" Kochoushu's brow creases, and her hands clench on her lap. Instinctively Watanuki knows that what she says now is a true wish, but it is connected to her most pressing problem. She's taking a gamble. "I want the power to see spirits," she blurts out.

Watanuki cocks his head. "Can't you?"

"No. Just—times and places."

Watanuki blinks. "You mean dimensions?"

"Yes. I suppose."

"Surely that includes the Otherworld—"

"To a degree. But I can only see the Otherworld, the Underworld, or Heaven in itself, when it deigns to impinge on our reality, which is rarely, and only in places where the physical borders are thin. Then I can see beyond. But when creatures from those worlds walk in our world, I cannot tell," Kochoushu says tersely.

"What do you need it for?"

Kochoushu shakes her head. "I do not deny that there is an immediate purpose. However, I believe that as I am drawn into the study of magic, it will help in the long run, for it is better to _know_, not to guess."

"Such has not been my experience," says Watanuki.

"And what _was_ your experience?"

"That of an ostrich burying its head into the sand..." Watanuki shakes his head and leans forward. "What you see can also see you. As a result of that wish, you become a target of the Otherworld. Spirits will latch onto you, take advantage of you, beg favors of you, hurt you. Think well. Once you are granted this ability, it never goes away." Watanuki places his palms on the table and sits straight. "The danger is not one to be taken lightly. You will probably have fewer problems than I, for I do not sense the kind of sweetness in your blood that attracts spirits—so the weak ones will not molest you—but the risk of attracting the notice of the more powerful spirits is great nonetheless."

"How long have you had this power, then?"

"Since birth," Watanuki replies bluntly.

"You were powerless as a child. Surely you grew to learn how to deal with them safely," Kochoushu objects, "Later on. As I would learn."

"Yes, under the tutelage of my predecessor, and other people. She taught me how to deal with it, but the annoyances never let me be." He falls silent. _Until I became shopkeeper_. Watanuki isn't quite sure that, if he quit the job at some point down the line, that Yuuko's protection would still apply. It ought, but Yuuko had never cast a spell or wrought a magic that he could see to that effect.

"Let them think what they think," Kochoushu says dismissively. "I will deal with it. If I am to be a magic-worker, I must be fully a part of the world I influence."

"You _know_ you're a magic worker?"

"I know how to do _some_ things." Kochoushu flexes her fingers. "Power will out… And seeing other worlds is conspicuous, I'm sure you will agree."

"So you want control," Watanuki guesses.

"Ultimately, yes. But the first step—"

"I see." Watanuki drums his fingers on the table. "You're right."

"I am?" Kochoushu says blankly.

"Yes. I may not like it, but you are. It's not a good thing to have a foot in two worlds, and be unaware of all the influences. Therefore, I shall make preparations to do as you request."

She bows from the waist. "Thank you very much."

"Don't thank me yet," Watanuki sighs. "This may be one of your wishes, but not your immediate wish as of right now. That I can tell. Sometimes that can lead one astray."

"I have not yet decided on a course of action." Kochoushu folders her hands together and considers them.

"In other words, you won't know until you can See," Watanuki says dryly.

She nods.

"A conundrum. Here is your price, then: service."

"How much?"

Watanuki shrugs. "In effort? In time? In kind of work? It is all variable. You will be done paying when the balance is struck, and at that time we will both know it. Probably within three years, if you have no more heavy wishes."

"The wish is that heavy?"

"It is. Very. Consider yourself apprenticed."

Kochoushu blinks. "Is _that_ what this is?"

"My predecessor never said as much—she called it a part-time job—but I realized that was the actual deal only after the fact. What can I say? I was rather slow in high school. And I'd rather be honest with you. I could never be the type of person that woman was." The set of Watanuki's jaw tightens.

Kochoushu raises her eyes, and watches him. "When shall I come and work?"

"Come by after school, just like you did now."

Kochoushu stands. "Then I shall come another day."

"Yes."

Watanuki leads her to the door. Kochoushu slips on her shoes, and its about to go, but she turns and says, "I know I've never met you in my life, and yet you seem very familiar to me. I can't quite erase the feeling."

"I know," says Watanuki in a low voice, and leans over her to hold open the door so she can leave. "And it's true."

Their eyes meet one last time, so her eyes flash with concern, and then she slips out the door.

* * *

Less than five minutes later, Shizuka barges in, sliding the doors open and shut with a little more force than necessary, shakes his shoes off in the _genkan_, and pads into the living room.

"Don't you have classes?" Watanuki asks him, not looking up from some cards he's shuffling. Tarots, upon closer inspection.

Shizuka shakes his head. "National holiday."

Watanuki says, "I see," cuts the deck, and shuffles again.

"Did Kochoushu-san come by?"

"Yes, she just left."

"What did she want?"

"To be able to see spirits. Something happened to make that need urgent. She wouldn't tell me exactly why. However, control of her growing powers is a factor—which seeing spirits is only a part of. It's not everything."

"I see," said Shizuka.

"Care to find out?" Watanuki resumes shuffling.

Shizuka stares at him. "Are those…?"

"A little fortune-telling can be useful, sometimes. But you just don't do it in front of the kids. Eventually, they learn adult bad habits on their own."

"Mmhn." Shizuka draws up a chair and sits down. "This is a bad habit?"

"It's addictive, and informative in its way, but its answers are often vague. I think it was a trick of Yuuko's," Watanuki explains calmly. "She always knew too much. These cards are endowed with the magic to discover cause-and-effect ley lines in time through the _hitsuzen_ principle. The truth of fortune-telling is, you are often scanning the past to view the possible futures the past might lead to. Of course, the results are rather general, but you can eliminate some outcomes much more quickly."

"So in this case…"

"I know Kochoushu-san's true wish, and some of the motivation for it, but not what the wish is _for _in the immediate future_, _although she clearly has intent of some kind… However, I can use fortunetelling to discover that wish's direct connection to the past, and to the future."

"Interesting."

Watanuki silently deals the cards. Shizuka sees nothing very special about the process. Other fortunetellers he's watched at festivals and so on will do chanting, or singing, or humming of some kind and move mysteriously, but Watanuki's manner is entirely plain. Watanuki glances at the cards, announces pieces of his interpretation after a moment's thought, and moves on. By the end of it, Watanuki has three entirely different theories about what is going on. Shizuka listens.

"Only one of those is true, though?" Shizuka asks at the end.

Watanuki nods. "We'll find out." He swipes at the assembled tarot cards, scattering them into disarray, mixes them up, gathers them in, and reshuffles. He replaces them neatly in the box he found them in, lays the box aside, and sighs. "All three predictions require very different preparations. Of the three, which do you find least likely, Shizuka?"

Shizuka shakes his head. "I really couldn't say. They all seemed—contrived."

Watanuki gazes at Shizuka thoughtfully. "They may at that. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen, though."

"Perhaps there's an agent at work obscuring the truth, then?"

"Possibly. —Are you ready for lunch?"

"Kitsune udon," Shizuka orders immediately.

Watanuki heads for the kitchen.

* * *

"Mokona, is there any chrysanthemum wine left over this year?" Watanuki calls.

Mokona bounces over and knocks itself against Watanuki's knees, quite on purpose. "Yes! Let's have a—"

"Not for drinking, this time, no," Watanuki tells her, scooping up Mokona. Mokona pretends to sulk. Watanuki strokes its felt-like ears, all too briefly. Mokona quickly leaps out of his arms again.

"What do you need the chrysanthemum wine for, Watanuki?" Shizuka asks.

"Ceremony, of course…" Watanuki walks to the pantry and starts rummaging. He finds the bottle. Amazingly, it has just enough liquid for what he needs. He stares at it. He was sure they had drunk every last drop this year. _Hitsuzen._ He shakes his head, and withdraws from the pantry with the bottle in hand.

"Any other pieces to the riddle?" Shizuka asks.

"Perhaps if I look among the prices my most recent customers gave me…" Watanuki muses, not quite attending to Shizuka's question, and starts browsing the shelves.

Shizuka glances at the girl. Kochoushu stands stock-still under the doorframe, her eyes wide. She looks at everything, trying to take it all in at once, and she can't. There's too much to see, too much history. "Do you see something?" Shizuka asks her.

Surprised, she looks at him. Finally sees something worth her full attention. "Yes…" she breathes.

"What is it?"

Her face scrunches with concentration. "An egg. I think. But it has no life… It exists in several dimensions at once, and it came from a different world, which is why I can see it."

Shizuka is shocked.

Watanuki overhears, but only in part. "Shizuka, what is that?" he asks, turning his head to look.

"She saw an egg that my great-grandfather passed down to me. Yuuko gave it to him," Shizuka replies quietly.

"To Doumeki?" Watanuki whips around and stares into his eyes.

Shizuka nods once.

For a moment Watanuki forgets who he's looking at. His surroundings momentarily fade into white. Watanuki touches the wall, reassuring himself that something is there. Reality reasserts itself sickeningly slowly.

Simmering anger seeps into Watanuki's bones.

There was only one way this could have happened, and that was if that _idiot_ Doumeki, the more idiot he was, if _Doumeki_ had deliberately kept knowledge of the egg from him_._ Doumeki kept it right under his nose, and had the gall to pass it on without his knowledge! If Doumeki didn't want Watanuki knowing, what could that mean? Nothing good. Of that Watanuki was sure, and it frightened him.

It takes him what seems to be an age to remember who is standing in front of him—it's Shizuka—Shizuka. Shizuka can't be blamed. It's not Shizuka's fault that he kept Doumeki's stupid secret. _Doumeki_ at least would have understood what Watanuki was like, what this would mean to him, would have realized his act was one of complete _betrayal_…

Shuddering with rage, but now shamefaced, Watanuki quickly breaks eye contact with Shizuka. He turns to the girl and questions her instead. "Kochoushu-san, that's what you saw?" His voice is thick and strangled-sounding, but he has regained control of his face. She won't see him angry. He looks her straight in the eyes and forces himself to _still_.

"Yes," she replies.

Shizuka reaches deep into his kimono sleeve and takes out the gray, fragile-looking egg with shaking fingers. It looks soft as slate-gray talc, but it is actually as hard and heavy as stone, with a smooth, even surface. "Here."

"What was it for?" asked Watanuki slowly. Heavily.

"You."

"Yes, but—" Watanuki's face pinches into a fiery scowl.

"I don't know. But she saw it. It's important."

There's silence, heavy stone silence, standing between them now. Without a grievance to support it, Watanuki's anger slowly wears away.

When he replies, Watanuki's voice is strained, though he has got better control of himself. "Do you know—do you know what— What did Yuuko say? Exactly?"

Shizuka clears his throat. "I'll tell you…" He glances at the girl. "…later. My great-grandfather made me memorize her exact words."

"I see. Then you know what it was supposed to be used for."

"Only you could say for sure, now that you know. But great-grandfather's impression was that you weren't supposed to know. He never knew what to do with it."

Watanuki shakes himself. "As it happens, given my training and Yuuko's resources, I already know what properties that egg possesses. However, regardless of how it could have been used and what purpose it was intended for—of which I have a good idea—" Watanuki scowls "—it had the potential for several different purposes, including the problem we have at hand, which happens to be Kochoushu's wish."

Shizuka nods, watching him. Watanuki's anger, so quickly aroused, took him by surprise.

Watanuki bites his lip. "We need the right timing. A special day and a special time when the spirit world is active, and good luck is expected."

"Yes," Shizuka agrees.

The girl shifts from foot to foot. "When should I come back?"

"Tomorrow," says Watanuki. "And every day after that." He rushes to consult the lunar calendar tacked up on the wall with Yuuko's notes scribbled in the margins, and flicks his gaze between it and miniature Gregorian calendar on the desk, trying to compare the two. "Although it will probably be a week or two before I can do it. I need time to do a more scrutinizing analysis. Perhaps sooner, if there's a particularly auspicious weather event." He sounds tired.

"Kochoushu, today there is nothing you can do for me here. However, I would greatly appreciate it if you could go through the town and neighborhood and catalogue the places where you can see other worlds peeking through, or boundaries wearing thin. Just note where they are, what kinds of things you see around them, and make a guess as to the world on the other side. Could you do that?"

"Yes, Watanuki-san."

"Thank you for your hard work. You may go."

* * *

"Shizuka," Watanuki says, shortly.

Shizuka moves to hover somewhere behind Watanuki's left shoulder. "Yes?" he breathes.

"What did Yuuko say?"

Shizuka tells him. Watanuki presses his lips together and listens rigidly. Then he strides away, facing the wall, refusing to look at anyone.

"Why are you angry with me?" Shizuka asks, finally.

Watanuki shakes his head sharply in negation, closing his eyes. "_No_." He lays one hand over his eyes and takes a harsh, deep breath. "No, no, a thousand times no, not you; it's not your fault that I need to remind myself—it's Doumeki. It's _always_ Doumeki." He scowls.

"My great-grandfather."

"Yes," says Watanuki, trying not to sound upset. And then, turning abruptly, he loses it. "Well—and Yuuko too, dammit! The minx! Vixen! Player! Jade! Siren! Temptress! Vamp! That—damn—damn—_tease_!" Watanuki is almost in tears; he looks like he wants to punch something.

Shizuka blinks. "I didn't know you knew those words."

Watanuki glowers at him, his face inflamed, pink with shame. "I've been alive one hundred years, of course I know them. Just because I don't say them…" One tear slips down, leaving a trail across his cheek. "You didn't know _her._"

"That girl…"

"_Is_ her. But she's young, younger than when I met her." The color in Watanuki's cheeks is already fading. Watanuki, drained, leans against the wall.

"How old were you when you met Yuuko?"

"Seventeen. I think. She was … thirty-four? Thirty-six? Forty-two?" He pauses. "It doesn't matter. She was way out of my league," he adds, as if it was an afterthought.

"I see. But the girl isn't..."

"Yes. Yes, that's right. I wasn't expecting that."

"Is that why you are angry?" Shizuka's inquiring voice lilts.

Watanuki shakes his head again. "No, not that. I told you—this is all Yuuko and Doumeki's fault. A hundred years ago or so." Shizuka tilts his head. Watanuki swells with rage and throws himself into swift and restless movement. "You _dolt_, it's that wretched lifeless egg!" Watanuki shouts, pacing the room. "They never _told_ me. If Doumeki had been a little faster on the draw with that _thing_, life as I know it might not have existed! I might have forgotten everything—everything that gives "me"_ meaning. _And Yuuko just gave that power to him, and I never knew. She _always _favored Doumeki and helped him meddle in my life. And that stupid idiot kept it such a good secret that he had to leave it to his _descendants_ to tell me the _truth_! And I'll never know what he has to say for himself!"

"I'm sorry," says Shizuka, a bit helplessly.

Watanuki rounds on him. "Idiot!" he snaps. And then Watanuki catches himself and resumes the silent chant in his head: _not Shizuka's fault, not Shizuka's fault_. He bites his lip and stares at the ground, trying not to scream with frustration.

"Mokona!" he barks, more sharply than he meant to. He can't help it when his voice grates.

Alarmed, Mokona shoots across the floor, a little black blur, faster than the eye could see. She meekly slides to a stop under the table and peeps around a chair leg to take a look at Watanuki's face before she ventures out.

"Come here," Watanuki says curtly, not caring to be gentle with his tone. "I won't hurt you." He held out his hand and Mokona hops on, switching her ears back in trepidation.

"Mokona, if Doumeki had used the egg, what would have happened?"

"Huh?" she squeaks.

"What would have happened?" Watanuki repeats.

"N-nothing…well…Mokona doesn't know. But the time he needed to use it hadn't come yet," Mokona says. "So nothing could happen and the chance would be lost."

"Is the time for which it is needed coming soon?"

The _kuromanju_ shakes her head. "No. It's _now_ happening. Happening since Watanuki stepped outside the shop."

Watanuki had expected as much. Watanuki sighs, puts down the _kuromanju_, and decides to escape into the kitchen, where he can calm down away from sight of a certain Doumeki.

* * *

When Watanuki has gone, and Shizuka hears the muffled clanging of pots and pans, Shizuka knows it is safe. Mokona's statement was interesting. Shizuka looks back at Mokona and asks, "Why didn't you stop us today, then?"

"It was his choice." Black Mokona purses her lips. "Watanuki was delaying. He might never have gone outside if he waited any longer. Yuuko did not want that for him. People should not be immortal for long."

"As I thought," Shizuka mutters. "So I have only to continue what I have been doing, and it becomes unnecessary." Mokona nods. Shizuka leans his forehead against the cool egg cupped in his hands. A flash of vision comes to him, and he gasps and almost drops the egg.

The _kuromanju_ leaps into his lap. "Yuuko?"

Shizuka nods slightly. "She told me what to do."

"Good, then," Mokona says in a small voice. The _kuromanju_ hops onto Shizuka's shoulder and cuddles his ear.

Shizuka sighs. "Are you ever lonely, Mokona?" Shizuka asks the _kuromanju_.

"No. Because Mokona is never alone." Mokona snuggles.

"But you have to hide things from Watanuki."

Mokona chirps and twitches its ears. "Yes. But it is sad-making, not lonely. Because I am not alone."

Shizuka thinks that the Mokonas have a different conception of loneliness than the one he possesses. "Why aren't you alone, Mokona?"

"Because I have Watanuki, silly!" Mokona pretends to pout. "And _you_." Mokona pretends to nibble Shizuka's ear. Shizuka gives a quick shake of his head, and Mokona topples off of Shizuka's shoulder.

"Why me?" asks Shizuka as Mokona crawls onto Shizuka's hands from where it fell in his lap.

"Shizuka Doumeki cares about Watanuki, and Watanuki doesn't understand him like Shizuka Doumeki understands Watanuki. Mokona cares about Watanuki, but Watanuki thinks that Mokona is always silly. Mokona is not always silly; Mokona is also serious, sometimes. Mokona also understands Watanuki. Mokona cannot talk to Watanuki about Watanuki because Watanuki does not understand himself. …And also," the _kuromanju_ hesitates, "Because Mokona also talked to Yuuko like this. But Yuuko is gone."

"Thank you, Mokona," says Shizuka softly. "I see now."

Mokona makes no reply, but presses itself against his hands again, and just as suddenly bounces away.

Even such small creatures need the reassurance of touch sometimes, Shizuka thinks. Just like Watanuki. But Watanuki often forgets.

Shizuka doesn't know what Doumeki knew. In many ways, he is still a stranger to Watanuki still, but Watanuki is unable to treat him as one. Neither is Watanuki prepared to relate to Shizuka as the individual he is.

This is nothing new, but it is also true that until now they have never clashed over it. Right now, guilt is eating at Watanuki.

* * *

_Although I had no inkling of when this day would come_

_Still you are there,__ making your presence known._

_And ever since you were no more,_

_My body dried up, turning the color of a chrysalis._

_I am reborn in a room as cold as winter_

_Just as if I really were a beautiful butterfly._

___Though my wings are wet still,_

_And they might seem useless to some_

_As they open, little by little,_

_I dream of soaring into the sky._

_If at last that day should come all of a sudden,_

_Where should I fly with these wings?_

—"Sanagi" / "Chrysalis" (Shikao Suga) [translated]

* * *

Author's Note:

I have no idea whether Kochoushu's name could be real or not. If it is, it would be of these characters: 蝴蝶 (_kochou, _butterfly) and 主 (_shu, _master/lord). Even if it is real, it is probably not supposed to be used as a family name (though I can think of a couple of far-fetched explanations for it!). According to then end notes of one copy of the _Kwaidan_ that I borrowed through inter-library loan (a long time ago, so I can't check the veracity now), her given name, _Tekona,_ supposedly can mean both "butterfly" in one Japanese dialect and "beautiful woman."

Anyway, although possibly inaccurate, this name works for my purposes.


	4. Chapter 3

**| Chapter 3 |**

* * *

Syaoran finds Fai and Kurogane lurking outside of Sakura's throne room as if they had known that was where he had been going next. He was glad to see them, of course, but did they have to to ambush him?

"I was going to see the princess," he says, trying not to let his irritation show.

They nod. "That's why we're here."

That's what he was afraid of. "So you actually just want to see me." Syaoran crosses his arms. "What is it?"

"We…" Fai looks at Kurogane and seems to lose heart—rare for him. "We noticed you were speaking rather harshly to Watanuki…" He turns to Kurogane for support. Kurogane just stares him down. He got himself into this, he can talk his way out. "Um," says Fai.

"I was upset," says Syaoran shortly.

"We know. Did Watanuki say something to upset you?" Fai asks.

"You were eavesdropping, weren't you?"

They shrug.

"He stopped his time for a full hundred years. Of course I am upset. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that the consequences of Fei-Wong Reed's meddling are far-reaching, but I had no idea that he suffered so much more than I for something I had done. That idiot never hinted. Not once. And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to talk to Sakura-hime." Syaoran takes strides forward, about to sweep past them.

He's hiding things. The boy certainly has grown up over the years. Kurogane blocks his way. Syaoran blinks at him. "I don't know if you've noticed," Kurogane barks, "but we are not stuck living in one place."

Syaoran is confused.

"We have realized that we…Fai-san and I…" Kurogane looks at Fai as he searches for words. "We haven't found the world we belong in, yet. There's no place we want to live. So we thought we'd go and check out his place for you. And maybe settle down."

"You'd do that?" Syaoran asks.

Kurogane snorts. "It's in our best interest anyway. If you're so concerned that you got angry about him, it's the least we can do to find out what's going on. You are close enough to him that you will have a hard time seeing the picture clearly. We do not know Watanuki as well as you do. And perhaps more importantly, he does not know _us_."

"That would certainly take a load off my mind…for the time being. Belated though the action is." Syaoran runs one hand through his hair. "It may be over already," he mutters to himself. The he clearly addresses his old travelling companions. "I know that it's not practical to go straight there as if I was really worried about him; he'd cover it up, and I would learn nothing. But if you guys go, you might notice something."

"Kuro-tan thought it was something like that," says Fai.

"Kurogane-san?" Syaoran looks at him. He nods.

Fai replies. "Big Puppy knows Small Puppy best." Kurogane turns away and tries to preserve his dignity by looking cool and pretending that he hasn't heard a word.

Syaoran smiles slightly.

Fai looks again at Syaoran, more seriously, and wonders aloud, "Well, since that's settled, should we leave now, or should we pay our respects to Sakura?"

Syaoran jumps. "Yes—well—by all means... Of course you should see Sakura! You won't stay long?"

"Not if you don't want us to." Kurogane clears his throat. "After that, we'll say our goodbyes and we'll have White Mokona send us to Watanuki's place, but she won't come with us; we'll leave the _shiromanju_ with you so you can talk easily with Watanuki as the day approaches. Then if we decide to stay in Watanuki's world, that's all fine and good, because we won't need White Mokona—"

"I'm going to miss White Mokona," Fai mourns.

Kurogane coughs. "Quite. Anyway, Black Mokona can send us back here or anywhere else when we need to go travelling again. Black Mokona probably also has the translation ability."

"As I recall, Watanuki's world speaks Kurogane's language in a different form, so it shouldn't be hard for us to learn even without White Mokona," Fai says thoughtfully.

"The point is, we're leaving White Mokona with you," Kurogane says bluntly. "Because you need Mokona more than we do right now."

"Thank you," Syaoran breathes, amazed. "Thank you so much."

"No problem, kid," says Kurogane, ruffling Syaoran's hair, just like old times—although these days Syaoran's head comes up to Kurogane's shoulder. Syaoran is almost as tall as Fai, but not quite.

"Well, let's go see the princess, shall we? Together, right now? It would embarrass her if she got upset in front of us, so maybe we should leave first," Fai says. His tone is light but his face is serious. "That's what you were planning to do when we met you, right? She probably won't get angry, but she might be worried."

Syaoran takes a deep breath. "Thanks for the advice, Fai-san. I wasn't sure what to do."

"Yes, you're too honest for your own good." Fai winks. "Just like Watanuki, I would hazard, yes?"

"Very like Watanuki." Syaoran tries to smile.

"But unlike Kuro-tan, I've always understood Sakura better." Fai grins. "So, let's celebrate our reunion."

"Sakura doesn't drink these days," Syaoran reminds them.

Fai shrugs. "There are many ways to have fun. I, myself…" Fai looks at Kurogane carefully, "...am rather sick of getting drunk."

Kurogane grunts. "Pretending to get drunk, you mean."

"Yes, it is _such_ a nuisance." Fai flicks his hair like a girl. "Glad _that's_ over."

Kurogane makes a face, and Syaoran chuckles.

Fai looks over, and lets a trace of a smirk settle on his lips. "I haven't let spill all my secrets, Kuro-guro, have I? It wouldn't do to let them all out at once..."

Kurogane snorts. "Even if you didn't play your cards close to the chest, wading through those is going to take a lifetime, mage."

Syaoran shakes his head. "Well, come on in, then…" Syaoran leads them inside.

* * *

"Sakura-hime… Sakura!" Syaoran whispers, creeping closer to Sakura, who is mediating upon her throne. Fai and Kurogane hover at the doorway, quiet shadows.

Sakura slowly opens her eyes and tilts forward. "Syaoran?"

"What have you been seeing, Princess?" Syaoran kneels at her feet.

Sakura stirs. "Change."

Syaoran bites his lip. "For us?"

"A little. For us, and for our little one." Sakura's hand hovers for a moment over her belly, and then falls away. "But for another as well." She pierces Syaoran's eyes with her gaze.

"Who?" Syaoran says cluelessly.

"For Watanuki."

"Oh..." He's taken off guard.

"I must tell you that I saw the conversation you had now almost six months ago, when you first came home. But I didn't tell you then, for that would change the future. Because of that—just now it came to pass, did it not? There is a path available to Watanuki that there was not before," says Sakura, settling back in her throne. "There are new possibilities. I believe I did right."

"Then you knew of his fate?"

"Yes."

"Did the witch foresee this happening?" he asked.

"I cannot tell; but I would not underestimate her. Syaoran, will you forgive me for not telling you?"

"I forgive you," says Syaoran, easily, immediately. "Of course I do. I trust you."

"Thank you." Sakura slips off of her throne and rises to her feet, then looks down in puzzlement. "Now, Syaoran, as my husband, you don't have to kneel to me."

"I felt like it," says Syaoran simply, and a little defensively, and rises to his feet. "It's only proper, right?"

"Syaoran…" Sakura sighs sharply. "I appreciate the gesture, but there is more at stake here than just our relationship, which I would prefer to see becoming more equal, personally... And—there is also Clow to consider. I need you as King."

Syaoran's eyes widen, and he immediately scrambles to his feet.

"Yes, Princess," Syoaran says, a little unhappily. He winces and rubs his face, which is blushing with embarrassment. What she asks is hard; this is the way it has always been, the way he has acted with her from boyhood. He had them drilled into them from a young age, but now that those manners are no longer appropriate, it is hard to eradicate them.

Sakura squeezes his shoulder sympathetically. "I know this is hard to hear, but there is gallantry and then there is servility. Syaoran. We can be equals and you can still be gentle with me. I just need you to learn the difference. And not just that—I need you to learn about how your actions appear to our people."

"I know. I'll try, Sakura. It's a habit I'm trying to beat." Syaoran tries to smile. "The truth is, I hardly know where to start."

"Thank you. I know you will." Sakura smiles at him briefly, and then lifts her head to where Fai and Kurogane wait in the wings. She had known they were there from the start, but now she acknowledged them. "Fai! Kurogane!"

They walk forward. "Here, Princess."

"What brings you?"

Fai turns. "Why don't you explain it, Syaoran?"

Syaoran coughs into his hand. "Ahhh... Let's put it this way. Sakura-hime, I am sending them to attend to Watanuki."

"I foresaw that might happen." Sakura smiles. "I wish the two of you good luck, then. But stay for dinner before you go? You may find Earth more to your liking, but Clow has its charms. I hope you remember apple _paryu!_"

The guests blanch before her eyes. _How could we forget?_ Fai and Kurogane thought. _Sure, it was delicious, but— How can one remember it without also thinking of the deaths of some of the people of Clow trapped in Fei Wong's spell? Or that poor boy..._

A few seconds after the words left her mouth, Sakura seemed to realize what she'd just said. "Don't worry, it's not quite the same as you remember," Sakura anxiously reassures them, seeing their crestfallen faces. "I—I mean, there's been a popular variation of the dish going round that we've latched onto in the palace. We're trying to redeem our memories of that time and honor the dead. It's a good dish, and it's _Clow's_, it doesn't deserve to be tainted by the past. Don't you agree?"

They nodded, all feeling relieved. "Yes, Sakura-hime," they agreed.

"In fact—" She cheered up immediately. "I know! You can help me give the variation a new name!"

"A splendid idea," said Syaoran, quietly.

What presses upon all their minds is that the kingdom of Clow yet bears some scars.

* * *

"Why couldn't Kohane or Himawari-chan have left me a few descendants?" Watanuki grumbles a couple of days later, having momentarily forgotten which of the Doumekis he is with.

"You know why," says Shizuka, and he shuts his book abruptly. It's a hypothetical question, of course. Himawari-chan never bore children. Kohane, on the other hand, married Doumeki, so technically Shizuka was her descendant as much as he was Doumeki's, though he clearly didn't inherit as much from Kohane.

Watanuki missed his friends. He was lonely and had no other way to express it. But Shizuka was tired of it. "You can't have everything," he says bluntly.

"I know," Watanuki sighs, his tone more moderate than Shizuka expected. "I know. I know. I know. But I can't help wishing."

"I suppose that's true, but it sounds..." Shizuka replies, and completes the thought with difficulty. "...as if you do not appreciate what you have." He doesn't like disagreeing with Watanuki.

Watanuki is reminded of the way he used to act with Doumeki, and he blushes with shame. Same old problem; new angle. Perhaps Watanuki hasn't changed as much over the years as he thought he had. "I know," says Watanuki again. After a moment, he swallows hard and turns to his friend. "Shizuka."

"Yes," says Shizuka quietly, expectantly.

"It seems I have been remiss. I _am_ thankful you are here. It is not just because if you weren't, I might fade completely into the dream world. You do much more for me. If I could, I would make it so that I wouldn't miss the old days as much as I do. My nostalgia is a hindrance to myself and to you. For that, I am sorry."

Shizuka is amazed. He never expected Watanuki to respond that way.

"But I am stuck for now." Watanuki looks out, over the garden, through the gap in the sliding _shoji_. "You are so like your great-grandfather, and so totally unlike. It is hard for me to distinguish between the two of you. When I forget, I find myself bantering with someone who doesn't exist anymore, and I hurt you."

"…Oh." That's what's been going on, Shizuka realizes. All along. And it makes sense. He just hadn't thought of it before. And then he realizes something. "But Watanuki—"

"I hurt your great-grandfather, too," says Watanuki quietly, "But I guess he was used to it. Or—well—I think Doumeki got to the point where he didn't expect anything different." He sighs. "I don't know why he saw fit to sign over his entire life to someone was worthless as I am. Someone who didn't even know how to give thanks even when it was very much deserved."

Shizuka twitches. That was probably it right there: because Watanuki saw his life as worthless, and Doumeki couldn't condone that. Doumeki saw fit to make sure Watanuki's life wasn't wasted instead of lecturing to him about it, and waited for Watanuki to realize his own mistakes. To hear Watanuki say it out in the open like that— Shizuka twitches again. There's that foreign feeling whispering through his mind, the part that is like himself but not quite. "Watanuki."

"What?"

"It's just a feeling…but I think the old days _are_ coming back again."

Watanuki looks down. He's been twisting Yuuko's _kiseru_ between his fingers the whole time; a bad habit, as if he does it too much he might loosen the metal frame from the wood. He puts the pipe down with effort. "Yes," he says slowly. "I think so, too. Perhaps that is why the old troubles and worries and preoccupations have been coming back as strongly as they have."

Then he looks up. "But they're just that—echoes, and reminders. When I step outside again…I'll be nineteen, no longer immortal, subject to the rules of that age. Do you realize? For all my hundred years of experience, I will have aged only two." He seems to be asking Shizuka, but he's really talking to himself. So Shizuka refrains from speaking.

Early winter. That's the season right now. Outside, the wind blows, and enough of the freezing gust comes indoors that it almost seems to blow through them through a crack between the sliding doors. "I am going to shut the _shoji_ now," says Shizuka, ever practical, and he does just that.

* * *

Yuuko's magic mandalas silently glide over the floor and ceiling. A pinpoint fold in space opens at their centers, cracks lengthwise, and expands just enough to release the world-travelers, Fai and Kurogane. They step out of the circles, and the magic mandalas vanish.

Watanuki is napping on the sofa; Shizuka is snoring lightly, slumped in a chair.

"I guess he's okay," says Fai quietly. "Look, do you remember, this one looks just like—"

Kurogane frowns. "He might at that. Doumeki?"

Fai is a little amazed. Kurogane usually forgets the names of the people they met on their travels and has to be reminded—unless they were Tomoyo-hime avatars, of course...

"What?" says Kurogane in response to Fai's staring, and Fai shrugs. There's nothing wrong with it. "When we visited, he just reminded me of myself, that's all…"

"Certainly his mannerisms and habits _did_ reflect yours," Fai muses.

"You don't suppose he's _my_ avatar? We haven't seen that before. It would be…weird."

Fai looks at the sleeping man. "No, I don't think so. You're just similar, in a lot of the ways that matter. Should we wake them up?" Fai wonders.

Kurogane shrugs and nudges Watanuki in the side with his boot.

Fai is so shocked that he calls the ninja by his whole given name. "_Kurogane!_" Fai hisses, horrified. "_How could you do that?! They're our—_" His voice drops, past the point where he can speak. "_Hosts! HOSTS, you idiot!_" He mouths, gesturing frantically.

Kurogane raises his eyebrows and steps away from Watanuki and back to Fai, raising up his hands. "Watch," he says, nodding to the boy.

Watanuki stirs finally and gropes for his glasses. Finding them, he puts them on clumsily, sits up, and peers around, blinking.

"Tomoyo-hime always reacted like that when we were little," Kurogane murmurs.

"Kurogane, you did that to _Tomoyo-hime?!"_ Fai yelps. "To _Princess Tomoyo?!_"

Kurogane coughs. "Ah…yes. It was a long time ago. I was a bit upset at her for…it was immediately after my parents…" He coughs again. "Don't worry, she put me in my place. Anyway, all the farseers I know are deep sleepers. Sakura-hime was, too. You must have noticed on our journey."

"I have _no_ idea what you're talking about," Watanuki grumbles groggily, who has only taken in snippets of the conversation, and proves the point. Watanuki adjusts the wrap of his kimono to lie a little flatter and walks past them, into the kitchen. "Fai. Kurogane. When did you arrive? Stay for dinner?" Watanuki cracks a yawn. "I mean, welcome…"

"Of course. Actually, we're staying until Syaoran comes," Fai volunteers, following Shizuka into the kitchen, where Watanuki is randomly pulling open drawers and yanking things out of the cupboards and plopping them onto the kitchen counter.

"Dang it," Watanuki mumbles, as a pot tumbles out of his grip and clatters onto the counter. A moment later the sound shocks him fully awake. "Did Syaoran put you up to this?" Watanuki stoops down to pick it up.

Fai grins. "We put Syaoran up to it."

"Oh really?" Watanuki's gaze drifts to the floor, and then settles on Fai's feet, and moves over to Kurogane's. "Oh, great... You came via White Mokona, didn't you? She deposited you in the house? But Mokona stayed in Clow? Oh—aaargh." Watanuki scrubs his eyes.

"Yep. Problem?" asks Fai.

"It's not a—a _really big_ deal, you couldn't avoid it because you transferred right into the middle of the house, but—look, the floors are delicate, and they're antique. I try hard to keep them clean. Could you step into the _genkan_ and take off your shoes there?" Watanuki asks politely. "It's down the hall, that way." Watanuki points.

Horrified, Kurogane looks down at his booted feet and hastily turns on his heel to take them off. "_Kuso_, I forgot. We've spent so much time traveling I almost forgot my own home customs. I'm so sorry, Watanuki-kun, I should have been more careful. Fai, customs here are similar to my homeworld's, if you remember…"

"Thanks, Kurogane-san." Watanuki goes back to contemplating the contents of his kitchen, but he's not getting anywhere. His head is empty. What to eat, he can't think of anything… When Kurogane and Fai return, shoeless, he asks them, "What would you like to eat?"

They shrug. "Anything is fine."

"But surely you haven't had home food in a while," Watanuki protests. "I could make some for you."

Fai thinks a bit. "You probably won't recognize my kind of food," he says reluctantly.

"Have a try anyway."

Fai shrugs and complies. "Okay, um. _Krupkakkor, plätt, köttbullar, blåbärssoppa, laufabrauð, kleina, _or _skyr._ Do you recognize any of those?"

"They're not translating..." Watanuki shakes his head. "I don't recognize them, so we'll do them another day. I'm too tired to re-engineer a recipe right now. Maybe if you can write down the names… Kurogane? You're from a version of Japan, aren't you?"

"How about feudal udon?" Kurogane offers hopefully.

"Not you, too?" Watanuki clutched his head. He thought he heard the last of the griping for feudal udon with Doumeki's death. "Is it really that good?" He asks. Then he sighs, remembering who Kurogane is: a ninja. "Just so you know, that used to exist but it's supposed to be extinct here. So I can't make it unless you can teach me first," Watanuki reluctantly admits. Having had a feudal ninja under his nose for quite a few years, now he regrets that he didn't learn in time to stun Doumeki a good one… "Assuming we have all of the ingredients. Assuming that the recipe doesn't actually include something extinct or otherwise unobtainable. Assuming... Although I suppose I could send Shizuka out for groceries."

"No problem. Where do you keep the aprons?" Kurogane asks. Watanuki hands him one.

They discuss the basic ingredients and come to the conclusion that the dish is doable, and when they're done, Watanuki's mind turns to other topics. "Is Fai any good in the kitchen?" Watanuki asks Kurogane.

Kurogane shrugs and replies, "He's good at tea, cookies, and pastries. Otherwise, not so much—his main courses are lackluster."

"I see." Watanuki waves to Fai, who has been lounging by the door for a while, and suggests, "Why don't you go and wake up Shizuka?" by way of getting rid of him. Kurogane and Watanuki will be fairly busy, and Watanuki needs space.

"Sure thing," Fai whistles, and he whisks himself out of the room.

"Any questions you have to ask of me?" Watanuki inquires of Kurogane in a low voice while Kurogane fetches vegetables from the cooler.

Kurogane looks thoughtful. "You call Doumeki by his given name now? I remember him, you know, a little, when we visited that one time."

"That's Doumeki Shizuka's great-grandson, also named Doumeki Shizuka. And now they look so alike I can hardly tell them apart," Watanuki says quietly. He gets out the chopping board. "Shizuka was younger than Doumeki when we first met. But now—" he shakes his head. "It's as if Doumeki never..." He doesn't finish.

"I see." Kurogane rifles through the drawers, looking for the knives. "So why did you stop your time? I never understood that."

"To meet Yuuko again," Watanuki says shortly. "And to escape Fei-Wong Reed's curse. But my time is not stopped anymore."

"How is that?" Kurogane tests the edge of a blade and decides it's quite fine enough to use—a good sign; Watanuki instantly earns a token of respect for his skills. Kurogane is as picky as any swordsman about the sharpness of a knife's edge, and even good cooks that he met on his travels sometimes neglected to sharpen them properly.

"Because I stepped foot outside the house boundaries, and I met Yuuko again. You'll meet her soon. Her name is Kochoushu Tekona." Watanuki takes down a large pot and plops it in the sink.

"Butterfly master." Kurogane smiles faintly. "That does sound like what her true name would be. Her sigil was the butterfly, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Rather obvious, isn't it?" Watanuki fills the pot with enough water. "Anyway," Watanuki says abruptly, lugging the pot of water over to the stove, "I will be training Kochoushu the same way Yuuko trained me."

"Will you be all right?"

"_I_ should be. It's _her _that I'm concerned—at least initially— I've never taught anyone before. I don't want to do her a disservice."

"Watanuki-sama," a voice says softly. The voice is younger than the voice of the Doumeki Kurogane remembers. Shizuka appears at the doorway and yawns impressively.

Watanuki whips around. "For goodness sake, I told you not to call me that!"

"I know, but I thought you wanted to remember I was different from Doumeki," Shizuka says, somewhat apologetically.

"I'm glad you tried, but that's _really not the kind of thing that helps_. Didn't I tell you about my childish high school fantasies?"

"You did, but—"

"Please, just let it rest," Watanuki warns him, his voice strained. "I don't deserve the title. I told you, it makes me think of things that I really shouldn't—that I don't like to remember."

Shizuka shrugs, and exits the kitchen. If Watanuki won't take the bait, he won't push the issue.

"Why won't you let the kid to call you that?" Kurogane asks Watanuki in a low voice. "He adores you."

" 'The kid'?" Watanuki blinks.

"Shizuka-kun, I guess you call him." Kurogane takes over the sink and washes the vegetables one by one.

"He's an adult," says Watanuki, bewildered. He puts on the burner.

"But in comparison to you, he's just a kid. He hasn't got a fifth of your experience yet. He doesn't know everything about you or remember anything Doumeki did. He can't possibly understand what happened between you unless you explain it to him." As Kurogane finishes with one vegetable type, he carefully piles it next to the cutting board.

"I—I know, and I have been. A little at a time." Watanuki swallows. He puts the lid over the pot.

Kurogane clamps one hand on Watanuki's head and smiles broadly. "Then you are already doing well. You have only to continue."

Watanuki ducks slightly. He hadn't expected that.

Kurogane washes his hands again, finishes the rinsing, and begins chopping the vegetables.

Nervously, Watanuki runs one hand through his hair. "I should be over it. It's been one hundred years, so why—?"

Kurogane pauses slicing. "Fai and I had similar misunderstandings when we were first getting to know each other on our journey," he says finally. "I'm not sure if this helps, but I was probably playing the part of your Doumeki. Maybe it will help if you understand the other side."

"How—how did that feel?" Watanuki asks hesitantly.

Kurogane grimaces. "Uncomfortable. Fai kept coming after me from all these different angles I didn't expect, and I didn't know how to react. He frustrated me often by making fun of me or doing ridiculous things and making bad first impressions on people on purpose. After a while, I sensed he wasn't as happy as his antics would have me believe. I had to watch him carefully; then I realized there were things in his past that bothered him that he never told anyone about. I started piecing the clues together, and eventually I was rewarded with the truth. It was enough to convince me that he needed me at his side.

"Once that happened, he wasn't a nuisance anymore, but a true friend. I could tolerate his eccentricities and enjoy them a little. Sort of like you, he figured out how to poke fun at me in such a way that we could both laugh at ourselves. But that took time." He added, as an afterthought, "I suppose it's nice to hear that the other side agonized over their actions as much as I did." Kurogane has finished cutting the vegetables.

"Shall we put those in the pot?"

Kurogane nods. "But the udon goes first."

Watanuki comes to himself with a start. He hadn't even realized that the pot had just started boiling. "Yes, of course."

_Ding, dong... pin, pon..._

Watanuki winces and nearly drops something hot. He doesn't usually let himself startle in the kitchen. Kurogane looks at him sharply. "Who is that?"

Kochoushu Tekona walks into the kitchen. "Watanuki-san, how can I help?"

Watanuki squints at her. "I didn't ask you to come on weekends."

"Watanuki, I want to clear my wish as soon as humanly possible. Of course I'd come on weekends."

"I see. I need to find some work for you..."

"I thought you lived alone, except for Shizuka... Who is this?"

"I _do_ live alone! Shizuka just visits. This man's name is Kurogane," says Watanuki. "He's a friendly traveller and a former customer of the wishing shop. Not that the relationship ever really goes away. Kurogane, this is Kochoushu Tekona, my student."

"Nice to meet you," says Kurogane.

"Likewise," says Kochoushu.

Fai and Doumeki stick their heads inside. Kochoushu ducks her head; Fai nods back.

"And this is Fai, my partner," Kurogane says casually. "We have traveled together a long time. Actually, we're looking for a place to stay."

Kochoushu blinks. Fai edges into the room and creeps behind Kurogane, close enough that he could be breathing over Kurogane's shoulder. Kochoushu can't tell what he's thinking.

"You can stay with me," says Watanuki, frowning. Barely breathing, Kochoushu takes a step backwards, towards the wall, not wanting to be caught in their argument.

But Kurogane is reluctant to go along with his idea. "I meant long-term," says Kurogane, drawing himself up to his full height and looming with a slightly dour expression. He turns his head over his shoulder and eyes Fai, who for some reason is still hovering close enough to be breathing on his neck.

Watanuki shrugged. "For the time being... What you're looking for will be difficult to find in this economy."

"The point is, our stay with Watanuki is temporary," says Fai mildly, draping one arm over Kurogane's shoulder. With Fai there, Kurogane's height ceases to be intimidating. "And we surprised him after all. It would be rude to impose."

"I could do it," Watanuki says.

Fai shakes his head. "Vampire magics react badly to the shop. Although those powers are largely dormant, I can't stay more than a week." To demonstrate, he holds out one hand. His eyes flash gold and his fingernails grow long and curved; that's normal, but then raw, red sparks fly forth, causing Kurogane to flinch.

"He's a vampire?" Kochoushu asks, curious, leaning away from her spot by the wall.

Watanuki sighs heavily. "Yes. One kind, anyway...I forgot about _that_. I should have known, but vampires aren't common on this world. There are rules that apply to them."

Kochoushu asks, "What rules?"

Watanuki shakes his head, and explains to her, "There is a conflict that is created when vampires, as unclean beings, visit the wishing shop which is a holy space, set aside from evil, impurity, and decay. While the shop wards are advanced enough to permit vampires with consciences to enter the shop, the use of unclean magic will impair ordinary spells or cause unexpected or chaotic effects that are usually harmless. Such as the sparks. If a vampire stays in one place too long, it is possible for it to corrupt and warp the wards through the leakage of magic alone; it is also possible for the shop's magic to overwhelm and stricken the vampire."

"Interesting explanation. Whether it's accurate..." Fai shrugs. "I know what I felt." Kurogane looks at him carefully.

Watanuki nods. "So, you'll stay a week, then?"

Fai scratches his head and looks at Kurogane. Tired of arguing, Kurogane nods. And then they both agree.

* * *

_I don't want to run anywhere else_

_Somebody, please, say "YES"!_

_Because I can't go back to the place of yesterday_

_The place where I was with you._

_Even when I reach out, no one is there._

_For nobody knows the answer._

—"Nobody Knows" (Shikao Suga) [translated]


	5. Chapter 4

**| Chapter 4 |**

* * *

Kochoushu stays mostly quiet the whole evening, but she drinks up every word Fai and Kurogane say. Watanuki can see it from the way her eyes track the world travelers. She must have lots of questions, but she holds them in, watching and learning. It is quite clear that she prefers to keep her own counsel.

After dinner is over, Kochoushu expresses her appreciation for the meal and the conversation and returns home. Kurogane tries to help clean up, but Watanuki insists the regulars should do it, since Kurogane and Fai are still guests. It takes a while to convince Kurogane to stand down with the excuse that he had already helped with the cooking. As a result, Watanuki and Shizuka wash dishes while the guests take baths (Yuuko regularly used two of the three baths in the shop).

"It was good feudal _udon_," Shizuka tells Watanuki. "Thank you for making it."

"I'll make it for you again, another time, whenever you wish. Kurogane's recipe was surprisingly simple—there was only one ingredient I hadn't guessed when Doumeki challenged me to make it last time. The lucky thing is that it's actually very common. I'm surprised I actually got so close when I was researching it…" His brief trip to the past brings him up short suddenly, and he snaps back to the present, and what he had been going to say. "Hey. Before dinner— I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier."

Shizuka shrugs and wipes down another plate. "I understand that there are some things you'd rather not tell me."

"Here, listen...about that. It's not quite like... I think it would be easier for both of us if I told you about it." Watanuki draws him aside so Shizuka is looking at him and not at the sink in front of him, and explains about himself and Doumeki.

At the end of it, Shizuka blinks and says, "That…makes sense. Now I see. I think I understand why you were so upset now."

Watanuki nods and turns back to the sink, plunging his hands back into the rinse water and accidentally splashing Shizuka with soap. Shizuka flinches slightly. He hates getting wet, especially when he's not expecting it. "But what?" Watanuki pushes, briefly turning on the tap.

"Sometimes…I had thought it made you happy," Shizuka says cautiously. "Of course I wouldn't make it a habit to call you 'Watanuki-sama,' because you asked me not to. But sometimes it made you smile, or laugh, or seem pleased… I thought it made you happy. Even if it was a small distraction." A tiny perplexed frown puckers his eyebrows. Shizuka, anxious for having done the wrong thing for so long, wants to make doubly sure that he read the situation wrongly.

Watanuki looks in his eyes and cannot bring himself to reply. There are times when Watanuki is grateful for what Shizuka calls a 'distraction' from the sadness, although on the whole he is still uncomfortable with the past.

"Then do what you will." Watanuki drops his head. "I'm sorry to have worried you. You don't have to listen to me." He rinses a plate and hands it to Shizuka.

Shizuka takes it. "On the contrary," says Shizuka. His face is grave. "I must always listen to you. What I cannot always do is _obey_." He places the plate in the rack.

Watanuki stands still, lost in his thoughts. For Doumeki was always this way as well. It explains so much. "Stubborn as your great-grandfather," says Watanuki, laughing weakly, as he comes out of his daze. He tries to put lightness into his manner.

Shizuka finishes washing up and dries his hands.

But it isn't long before Watanuki remembers he has something else left to say. "Shizuka, about the egg…" he says softly.

Pausing in the middle of drying a plate, Shizuka stands very still. "Yes? What about it?"

"Earlier, I wasn't in a state to tell you what about it upset me. The reason is, I think I know what it was intended t-to be u-used for." Watanuki's voice shook a little. His hot anger from earlier in the day had mixed with worry until had all cooled into extreme unease.

"What for, then?" Shizuka takes the next plate Watanuki hands him.

"It was for me. It was to take away my Sight, and my memories." Watanuki flicks his fingers in the soapy water. "If I ever lost control. If I ever 'made Yuuko cry,' in her words."

Everything makes sense now. "Oh." Shizuka feels immensely relieved. He thought the egg might have meant something much worse than that.

Watanuki stares into the soapy dishwater in front of him. "You only had to break it, and my original wish would have been granted. I would be made unable to see spirits in addition to the spell nullifying the attraction my blood exerts on them. I would have left the shop for good. I couldn't even return there. Yuuko _may_ have placed a spell on it to seal my memories again, but I can't be sure." He swallows hard. "That's probably why… No, I don't understand what she was thinking. That should have been _my_ choice…"

"But you're not going to use it that way now."

Watanuki shakes his head. "No. I don't know when it happened exactly, but shortly after I became shopkeeper, my wish changed. I don't wish not to see spirits anymore. They are too much a part of me...and I...would miss them." He taps the counter with his fingers and shakes his head. "It's too late for that now. The balance has changed, and the shop knows it."

To Watanuki, it's over, but somehow his argument leaves Shizuka unconvinced. There might be traces of that wish left in the shop, biding their time... Still, Shizuka motions for Watanuki to go on.

"Anyway, once I knew what it was supposed to be for, I could reverse-engineer its purpose." Watanuki bows his head over the sink. "Since it was supposed to be used to _seal_ my Sight, I am going to use it to _open_ Kochoushu's Sight. That means I am going to have to destroy it…in a different way than simply breaking it."

Shizuka swallows, hard. This sounds close to what Yuuko told him would happen. "If that's what you think must be done, then do it, shopkeeper."

"Shizuka, surely you have something to say about that," Watanuki says, glancing at him nervously.

"Watanuki, I trust you. Watanuki, I—I had the strangest ideas as to what to do with that thing, and—trust me, I am sure your idea is much better." Shizuka falls silent. "Doumeki wrote something of the kind in his journals."

Watanuki gasps, "Are you sure?"

Never more so. "Very sure," says Shizuka.

Watanuki turns in a circle to stare at him. "That—! Doumeki wrote _journals_?" Watanuki asks, just to confirm, eyes wide.

What was so confusing about his statement? Shizuka doesn't understand. "Yes. Didn't I say? I thought I told you before that I had found them and read them."

"No… no, you never did." Watanuki takes his hands out from under the sink faucet and wipes them on a towel, scrunching it between his hands. "May I…may I read them?" His face has gone distant again, locked away in another place and time.

"Are you sure they won't … distress you?" Shizuka asks cautiously. He shuts off the water faucet which Watanuki forgot.

Watanuki's face undergoes several expressions, as if trying them on and finding each one lacking. The sight is somehow heartbreaking.

"I—" Watanuki twists his hands together again. How can he say anything to that? He doesn't know. "How could his words _not_ distress me?" he asks instead. "But I—I need to read them." He leans his forehead against the cool, humming refrigerator. "I must know what he thought of me. So I can let go."

Shizuka waits.

Slowly, the story comes out. "One day, you know, he told me he would die and then he was…gone. I was stuck, here. I couldn't even go to his funeral…" He takes a breath, full of pain.

"A week after he disappeared from my life, his children came and told me exactly what they thought of me. I had met them when they were young, of course, but I never thought they would grow and change so much that they would actually _resent_ me. But that day—they told me I had killed him. Because the will required it, I would be fed, but they would do nothing more than that. And what could I have done? I know I took too much of him—his _time_, especially, but Doumeki always insisted that he was happy being with me like he belonged here. He was stubborn as a rock, and he was right about me needing him. But for a long time I just treated him horribly. And I don't think I ever treated him as he really deserved.

"After he died, for a long time I was so alone I thought I might actually go around the bend. I waited until you were grown, though I had no way of knowing that you existed, until the day you appeared on my doorstep. For all that time, I had no one."

"How long?" Shizuka asks softly.

"Fifteen years. Remember? You were born on the day that Doumeki died. You told me that once. I hardly dared hope. That had to mean something. You came to my shop when you were fifteen, and stopped by every weekend since." Watanuki shudders. "You were so like him. I tell you, it was if Doumeki had returned from the dead, except younger. It felt just like that." He shudders. "Still does, sometimes. I have to know. _What was he thinking_? To put up with me that long. To put me through that. _I just can't understand._" He drags his fingers through his hair, ripping at the roots. "Neither of you, I never know what you are thinking—"

Shizuka grips Watanuki's shoulders with force, startling him, stopping the tirade. "If anyone deserved to to read them, you did," he tells him. "But listen. Doumeki never regretted a sacrifice, and would never make one that wasn't worth it. He lived for you." Shizuka rests the back of his hand on Watanuki's cheek and sets his eyes on Watanuki's mismatched blue and green ones. "_I_ would live for you," he says, making his voice as bold and soft as he dares.

"Shizuka, don't." Watanuki struggles to slip out of Shizuka's grasp and brushes Shizuka's hands away. Suddenly, Watanuki looks smaller than he should. "Don't," he repeats.

"It's not just him speaking through me. It's me. I want to."

"But you shouldn't—"

"_No_, Watanuki. Believe us when we say that you are worth the effort we put into you."

Doumeki's eyes bore into Watanuki; Watanuki shies and breaks eye contact. "So stubborn," Watanuki murmurs, despite himself, as if they were directed to the the floor.

The corners of Shizuka's lips twitch upwards. "It's a durable trait, Watanuki-sama," he says dryly.

For a second Watanuki blinks at him, and then he lets out a short sharp bark of laughter. He smiles faintly. "I can't seem to get rid of you. Or that title."

"Mn," says Shizuka. He releases Watanuki and turns back to the dishes, but not before he promises, "I'll find the journals for you."

* * *

The next day, Watanuki directs Kochoushu on various chores to do, chores that he would normally do himself, and soon finds himself wandering the house without a thought in his head. Everyone notices. Realizing that their presence might be distracting Watanuki from his real work, Fai and Kurogane announce that they are going to go looking for an apartment, work, or otherwise find something else to occupy their time. Mokona goes with them.

Which leaves Shizuka to watch the very anxious Watanuki pace the shop as if he has unwittingly lost something—which Shizuka supposes he has.

His price. Time. The barrier.

"Watanuki." Startled out of some kind of reverie, Watanuki whips around to face Shizuka and freezes at the expression on his face.

"I'm sorry," he reflexively blurts out.

"Watanuki," says Shizuka again. "Let's get out of here."

"Out?" Watanuki squeaks.

"Yes. Out," Shizuka asserts firmly, and gently pushes Watanuki's back to face the front door. He's right. Of course Shizuka's right, but even after the first time, Watanuki still feels like panicking. "Come on," Shizuka murmurs, and leads him to the front door. "We never went anywhere last time. You need to see how the world has changed."

"Not very, I hope," Watanuki mutters as he slowly bends to put on his shoes.

Shizuka slips on his own shoes. "You must face it someday."

Watanuki forces himself to nod. He looks at Shizuka again, and hesitantly opens the door.

"Go on," Shizuka encourages him.

Watanuki takes a deep breath, glancing at Shizuka apologetically, and shouts,"Mind the shop, please, Kochoushu-san!"

"Okay!" He hears her reply from another room. "Go well!"

Closing his eyes, Watanuki forces himself to yell his reply, "Be back soon!" Watanuki opens the door wide and bounds through quickly, as if afraid that the door might slam shut or bite his ankle. Shizuka hops onto the step beside Watanuki and shuts the door.

"Key?" Shizuka asks belatedly.

Watanuki blinks. "I've never needed one. The shop only lets in those who..."

"Oh yes. I remember," Shizuka says quickly. "Then—so where would you like to go?"

Watanuki squeezes Shizuka's arm, and says nothing. _Just take me._

Responding to the silent request, Shizuka pulls him on, and they walk. Watanuki says nothing, but he observes, a little at a time. His face appears to grow ever more pale. When Watanuki resists Shizuka's pull, they stop. They're outside a tiny deserted park. Watanuki seems to recognize it. There are structures in the gentle, sloping shapes of animals, and water-fountains, and sand for the children to play in. On the oldest structures, the paint is peeling. Most of them have been replaced by new modern structures. Only the stone animal benches remain from the days Watanuki knew.

"What do you see?"

Watanuki shook his head. "I can't take it in."

"But it's different?"

"Very different." Watanuki shivers.

"Tell me."

Slowly the story comes out as they walk back. All the little differences. All the darknesses in the town. All the changes, and the improvements, and most of all the fact that the quiet neighborhood Watanuki knew is gone. It's become part of the city. As he works through his memories, Watanuki slowly begins to relax, muscle by muscle.

He clenches again when he sees the shop, so tiny and rustic, among the tall buildings on either side.

"I really don't exist," he says softly.

Shizuka squeezes his hand so hard that it hurts and Watanuki makes a little gasp of pain. With a sharp intake of breath, Shizuka lets go, as if he had been burned—the action was unthinking and reflexive, almost as if someone else had taken over his hand...

"How—how long has it—?" Unable to go on, Watanuki slips his hand back into Shizuka's. Shizuka slowly closes his fingers over Watanuki's. A sign of trust...

Somewhat rattled, Shizuka replies, "It has been this way for the last ten years. Though it's hard to tell from over the shop walls."

Watanuki shakes his head suddenly. "It's as if I've been living in that storybook—_The Little House_…Did you ever read that as a kid? It's about how the city creeps..." He chuckles, but the sound is not merry at all, almost one of despair and disbelief. "Shizuka, I—I can't—"

"I know."

Eyes burning, Watanuki drops his head and buries it in Shizuka's shoulder. _What have I done? What have I done?_

"A wish is a terrible thing," Shizuka tells him quietly. "You've seen it all through the years, haven't you? You know how a single wish can make or ruin a person. It is hard to cope with a new world. That's what _this_ is."

"Even so," Watanuki falters, "Even so, I think my wish would remain the same… I know you're trying to make me—happy, but I—" Watanuki presses the heel of his hand into his eye and swipes angrily at the grit there. "I just...I _can't_."

"When you made your wish, you had no idea how to account for your loss," Shizuka replies. "You told me once that you weren't sure if the price was right. That it worked, but it took too much from you. This was one of those things."

When they finally walk past the gates of the shop, Watanuki opens the door, they carefully slip off their shoes, and they are home.

"I'm home," Watanuki says hoarsely, squeezing Shizuka's hand extra hard and firmly. Shizuka squeezes back.

As if she had known just exactly when they would be back, Kochoushu turns around and hefts the pot of tea in her hands as she smiles at them. "Welcome back_._" Her straight long black hair falls in long strands, just like Yuuko's. Her smile is shy, but full with undiluted kindness, a kindness that Yuuko's experience had taught her to keep locked in reserve. But Kochoushu has none of that history.

There are four simple words that can bear grief and the weight of the world. Hello, goodbye, welcome back, I'm home. Right now, in this moment, they anchor Watanuki to reality and they comfort and protect his soul.

* * *

**A Week Later**

Kochoushu shivers as Watanuki, his expression carefully impassive and focused, paints various calligraphic runes, ideograms, and kanji on her arms and legs, her neck, cheeks, and forehead, and her hands and feet with charcoal black ink. The bristles of the brush tickle her skin. The thick, wet ink begins to dry.

They are wards of protection. Just in case.

Watanuki lowers the brush and steps back. "Are you ready?" he asks.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Kochoushu replies shortly.

Watanuki hands her the lifeless egg. With seeming ease, she breaks its shell, slurps the contents, and swallows the yellow-orange yolk. Immediately, power begins eating away at her from within. Her head swims and her eyes blur. A powerful hum pulses in her veins, sometimes at odds with her heart. She falls to her knees.

"You should lie down," he tells her. "The power needs time to settle."

Kochoushu nods, closing her eyes. She slowly lowers herself within the custom circle diagram he drew for her (much simpler, and possibly more elegant than Yuuko's decadent patterns), lacing her hands tightly over her lap, and settles back.

Unable to watch her in such a vulnerable state, Watanuki re-enters the house to clean the brush. Shizuka meets him at the door with a question perched on his brow; Watanuki murmurs a few short words in his ear, and Shizuka nods and takes a seat on the porch to keep watch over Kochoushu, who appears to have fallen asleep. There is only so much that Watanuki can do. As a latent exorcist, Shizuka has a better chance of keeping the girl safe than Watanuki does, as a former spirit magnet.

Fai and Kurogane meet Watanuki inside, and halt to speak to him.

"What is it?" asks Watanuki.

Fai shifts awkwardly. "We were wondering if you knew where we could go to inquire about housing."

Watanuki looks up in surprise. "Well, I suppose you could have my old apartment. If it's still there... Actually, Shizuka told me it was..."

Shizuka slides open the screen door with one hand, and says, without looking round, "My great-grandfather rented it for you. It was part of his will." He slides the door shut again. He must have been listening.

Watanuki sighs. "There you have it. I can give you the address."

"You don't live there anymore?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "No. This is my home now."

"But we would still be your guests," says Fai.

"If you don't like the idea, then you can take over the rent. I'm not paying for it. The Doumekis won't mind getting their money back," Watanuki says lightly.

Kurogane and Fai look at each other and nod. Fai says, "Then we'll take it."

Watanuki yawns. "Follow me. You'll need special documentation. This world has become paranoid as of late."

"I don't understand."

"Immigrants are discouraged. There are laws taking action against people who come into the country from other countries illegally."

Kurogane furrows his brow. "But there will always be migrants. They usually mean no harm."

Watanuki sighs. "Of course there will, and they only hope for better futures, but still the government wishes to control them. They do so on the behalf of people who are afraid of competition in the job market. But world travelers have a problem, because do not belong to any country at all. So Yuuko's solution..." Watanuki unlocks the storeroom, and ushers them inside. "...was to magically forge the documentation and enter the information into the government databases via an agent to the magician population at large."

"What kind of agent?"

"Magicians, psychics, or elementals," Watanuki explains. "These agents understand parts of the world that require covering up in special situations to keep from alarming ordinary people. There are various organizations that select members to infiltrate the government for them, specifically for reasons such as these. Currently, the agent's name for this generation in this country is an elemental whose name is Yuuto Kigai."

"I see. But this is illegal?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "You haven't done anything wrong, and intend no harm. People do not cross worlds in such numbers as immigrants here do. To be born here and cross the borders without due political process would not be fair. However, the government does not know world-crossing travelers, and there are no laws against _that, _specifically. Therefore, it is worth it to make your entrance into society as painless as possible with all the changes you will be facing. There is no way to earn your documentation here; you must be born with it."

"What is the price?" Kurogane asks.

"What do you think it's worth?" Watanuki returns.

Fai and Kurogane stare at him. They have nothing that seems right—what they have is too much, or too little... They have the clothes on their backs, and Fai's magic, and Kurogane's sword, and other intangibles that they have yet to comprehend, let alone think about trading.

"I understand." Watanuki smiles slightly. "I'll take a blank check for now. You need the service. However, you should understand that the price is probably on the scale of a livelihood, as the forgery will allow you to have one. However you may define that."

The clue is cryptic, but they both agree. It could be worse.

"I need to look for Yuuko's equipment in that department. It's buried somewhere, I haven't needed it since this one case fifty-odd years ago. Can you two look for an empty golden cage for me? It should be on that side. Thanks." Watanuki waves his hand vaguely in the right direction.

Fai and Kurogane immediately break away to search for it. When they find it, Watanuki has found the correct equipment and is carrying it, and together Fai and Kurogane haul the golden cage onto the porch into the sunlight as Watanuki directs them. It's heavier than they think it should be.

Watanuki borrows Shizuka's ID and uses it to make forgeries for Fai and Kurogane. He tells them this is just the start, and that at some point they may find themselves in need of other forms, but this is essential for everyday use. Once the copying has been done, Fai and Kurogane collect Mokona so she can do their translating for them, and they search for the address to the apartment Watanuki described.

* * *

The moon has slipped into the sky by the time Kochoushu wakes. It is late afternoon; the sun is not yet set. In Watanuki's sight, the slender shadow of the invisible birds in the cage thickens as the sun sinks and the light of the moon grows stronger.

At last Kochoushu wakes from her doze with a slight jolt and a gasp. When she sits up, she presses a hand to her temple.

"How do you feel?" asks Watanuki.

"Fine. Just strange." She covers one eye.

"I see." Watanuki points to the golden cage. "What do you see there?"

She squints, spreading her fingers so that both eyes can see. "There's nothing in there, but on the ground...the shapes of birds..."

"Shadows of starlings. Do you see? How many are there?"

Kochoushu counts, and Watanuki is satisfied.

"That's a much easier test than my great-grandfather got," Shizuka says suddenly, appearing to look over Watanuki's shoulder. He must be remembering things during one of those rare, strange moments when the Doumeki part appears to synchronize with Shizuka.

"Doumeki never could see spirits, but he could defend himself," said Watanuki, brisk. "I was the spirit magnet, and he would put himself in harm's way to protect me. So I gave him a tool he could use to do so more effectively, and the price of the gift, fittingly, was a harrowing experience that would key the tool to Doumeki specifically. Or his descendants...you still have his ring, do you not? Kochoushu, however, is not in a position of danger. I wanted her first glimpse of the spirit world to be pleasant and beautiful, not frightening. Unlike his, or mine."

"But they are dangerous, aren't they," Kochoushu murmurs. "Even I know that."

"Without a doubt," Watanuki says softly. "You will learn soon enough that the majority of cases are indeed horrifying. But if you approach worlds and creatures from the other side with fear, you will never be able to deal with them fairly. You mustn't forget what goodness there is, or you will be overwhelmed, and that is what I wanted you to remember."

* * *

Fai and Kurogane actually look at quite a few apartments, but in the end, they came back to the small, bare room that used to belong to Watanuki. It is quite simple, not much more than a living room/bedroom, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom with a toilet and a shower installed. The tatami floor is worn, but well-cared for, and the walls are a musty-looking, an almost concrete grey. All in all the room is a bit gloomy, but it looks to be the cheapest of all the places they've checked out, and to be honest, neither of them is looking for excessive luxury. They just want a place to stay. Simplicity is the name of the game, so as long as there is room for two futons, this is probably their best deal.

A subdued Mokona has said little to them other than to observe, though it is thanks to her that they can communicate. She's moves restlessly in the satchel Fai has been carrying, and Fai knows she's tired, and that it's time to make a decision.

"Kuro-tan..." Fai forgets what he had been about to say; he hasn't been able to keep his mind on anything.

Kurogane grunts. "Mmn."

"You think this is the place?" Fai asks tentatively, drifting around the room.

He shrugs. "Do you? It's small, but serviceable. Good kitchen."

"The landlady said it comes with the appliances already installed, and there's an odd consortment of kitchenware thrown in." Fai is always talking to people. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes Kurogane finds it inutterably annoying. So Fai asks him, "Is it a good price, Kurogane? Can we afford it?"

He shrugs. "I'll take the numbers back to Watanuki—no, wait, Doumeki Shizuka, he seems more knowledgable of this world—and have him crunch them for us. But this looks to be our best bet."

Fai nods. "Does that conclude our search for the day, then?"

"I'd rather not waste time. We can find work instead." Kurogane hums thoughtfully.

As they stand there, Fai grows more and more restless. "Kuro-tan." In the satchel, Mokona pricks her ears and leans out of the top of the bag. Fai doesn't remember to push her back down where she won't be seen.

"What is it?"

Taken aback, Fai doesn't answer for a moment as he gathers himself together. Mokona puts her ears back, sensing his mood. "I'm…I'm hungry," he mumbles, finally.

"Already?" Kurogane is somewhat surprised. It's a little early in the week for feeding.

Fai nods.

"Food, or blood?"

At the word "blood," Mokona tumbles back into the depths of the satchel of her own accord. Fai bites his lip, then shakes his head nervously. "F-f-food." Normally enthusiastic at the mere mention of food, Mokona has the sense not to interrupt them with exclamations. Instead, she burrows deeper into the bag, and becomes still. Their emotions seem to pain her.

Kurogane didn't think so, but he had to check. He nods briskly and ushers Fai out the door. "Then let's get something to eat. We can check out the restaurants. They always need help."

"So it seems," says Fai, letting out a sigh. He leads the way as they climb down the steel-rail stairs from Watanuki's old apartment.

The sigh surprises Kurogane. "Don't you like restaurant jobs?"

"Oh, yes, they're good fun." Fai hunches and puts his hands in his coat-pockets. "The customer interaction is always interesting. I love making people feel relaxed, happy, at ease, and so on. But at this point, I can't deny that the work is also exhausting. And in the long run, it isn't fulfilling."

"Fai-san…" Kurogane feels like he is at a bit of a loss, walking behind him. He can't see Fai's face, so he's not entirely sure what to make of what Fai says.

Fai twists so he can meet Kurogane's eyes, almost as if he heard that thought. "Let's face it, Kuro-goro. You are a ninja. I am a magician. In this world, as on almost every other we have been on, our respective talents aren't valued for getting jobs."

"I wouldn't be so sure," says Kurogane. They round the last corner, and walk out into the street. Kurogane steers them to the right, back to the direction of Watanuki's shop. Fai lets him take the head. Fai doesn't get lost, but he tends to wend his way back by retracing the way he came. Kurogane's method of telling directions is different—he has a rough idea of the direction and the distance of Watanuki's shop relative to where they are—so he figures he can steer them closer to home while they forage for food.

Fai shrugs. "I guess you could teach kids how to defend themselves. But _me_? I'm useless. On most worlds, I'm just an entertainer."

"I didn't know you were so unhappy, Fai," Kurogane replies somberly.

Fai starts to say something, probably something rash and in denial, and then checks himself. "I guess." Two pink spots appear on his cheeks, and he sounds young, flustered, and embarrassed. "You shouldn't think too much of what I say, Kuro-chii. I can do whatever it takes."

Kurogane shakes his head. "Fai, that's what _I _thought I was doing: wandering and doing whatever it took. But if you also feel that way, maybe it's time for a change."

Fai makes a noise like he doesn't believe it.

"It's true," Kurogane protests. "I didn't say anything because I thought you enjoyed all the traveling. For me, it's always just been necessity. First it was Tomoyo-hime's curse; then it was saving Clow, and accompanying Syaoran. You always seemed so upbeat. If I suspected that you hid feelings behind _everything_ that you pretended to be excited about, I don't think we could ever trust each other."

Fai passes a hand over his eyes. "I know. I didn't want you to feel guilty because I was tired of what I used to love. And then I didn't look too closely at why I felt like that."

Fai will do what he can, but Fai can't change what he doesn't even notice himself doing. Pretending is too much a part of who he is and how he copes with the world.

Kurogane decides it is time to clear the air. "Fai. Don't take this the wrong way; answer me straight. Do you want to be a magician?"

Fai shakes his head. "No."

"It's what you're trained in. I'm sure Watanuki would know where you would fit in."

"I don't want to make a living off of it, Kurogane," says Fai. "When I do serious work for others, many of those requests will be ill-thought out—and my powers are too immense to take my gift lightly. I cannot summon the wisdom required to do that. And I need time to heal."

"What do you mean?"

"After...after Ashura-Ou, my gift became a heavy burden. Using it reminded me only of pain and suffering, because of that man. If I use it for serious work, and cause ruin, its weight will only grow heavier. Until I have grown comfortable with my power, I have decided to use it only at my whim, and no more. To see if there is any joy left in the art after all. If there is, then..." he shrugged. "But not until."

"I see."

"Kurogane, do _you_ want to be a ninja anymore?"

Kurogane paused. "Tomoyo-hime took the edge off my curse, but she never banished it. I can't go into a profession where I would have to kill people as a soldier. Moreover, because of what I learned on the journey, I find war and strife to be more and more distasteful. I could teach, as you suggested, but I believe my style is inappropriately aggressive for teaching children good discipline."

"Even on your world?" Fai blinks, and almost trips over a crack in the sidewalk.

Kurogane laughed mirthlessly. "_Especially_ on my world. Why do you think I got to be the best? People were always expecting me to hold back, or something. Like that was gonna happen... I was the most competitive of them all, and I was always angry. I barely listened to my teachers. I took what they taught me and reworked it to fit what suited me at the time. Not always to their approval."

"You were a good student, then," Fai surmises.

Kurogane shrugs. "Not according to them. I took a lot of hard knocks."

Fai chuckles. "Of course. Kuro-pan, it's much easier to listen and copy what teachers say, but you don't learn as much."

Kurogane snorts. "I suppose. But I still didn't learn the most important lessons, the ones of the heart, soul, and mind, that's what I'm trying to tell you." Kurogane pauses and tugs the mage's sleeve to get his attention. "In here?" It's a ramen shop.

"Looks good." Fai stops and steps through the door Kurogane has held open for him. "And which lessons were those, Kuro?"

"Forgiveness, mercy, and the meaning of true strength," Kurogane replies. "Having learned the hard way, I would rather any student of mine should learn those first than learn to fight skilfully. And I wouldn't know how to teach them that. _I'm_ hardly the greatest example. There are better people to learn that kind of thing from."

They both go to the counter. After perusing the menu, Fai points, and Kurogane steps forward to order for both of them. An exchange is made. Kurogane chooses a table and they both sit down.

"Kurogane...where should we settle?" asks Fai softly.

Kurogane doesn't answer for a while. He stares out the window, and Fai waits.

A young girl comes with their food and quietly slides it to them over the table. She smiles at them shyly and flits away. Kurogane thinks, for a second, that she looked like Tomoyo-hime when she was young. Though it probably wasn't.

Finally, turning his thoughts back to the matter at hand, Kurogane shrugs. "You weren't really excited about any of the worlds we visited, were you? —_Itadakimasu,_" he murmurs, and takes the first bite. Fai echoes his behavior. Mokona peeps out of the bag to sniff the air for food. Fai slips her a noodle, and Mokona disappears with it.

Fai shakes his head and continues the concentration. "No. They weren't my type. I think I could have stayed in your world and learned to like it, but as you said, it seemed like you weren't at home there anymore. The rest were fine, as long as they had people…but I wasn't attached, you know? The only people I really care about are you, Syaoran and Sakura, and White Mokona. It's kind of sad, huh?" Fai smiled sadly. "Maybe I'll find myself attached to Watanuki, Doumeki Shizuka, Kochoushu, and Black Mokona after we get to know them." From within the bag, Black Mokona croons with sympathy; Fai strokes her ears.

"I've been thinking much the same. It's either here, or Clow," Kurogane mutters, lowering his face into the hot wet steam rising from his bowl. He slurps his noodles.

"I know Syaoran and Sakura would be glad to have us on their world, but I'm afraid they might worry too much," Fai says softly, lowering his chopsticks back into the bowl. "They're secure and well-adjusted, after all, with a baby coming. It's only natural to want us batchelors to find happiness in comparison to what they have, but—oh, gods, Kurogane. We practically _raised_ the kids. They'd mean well, but—" Fai shrugs helplessly. "That's not...what I want."

"Yeah." Kurogane nods. "I know. I didn't want to think it, but I _do_ see that happening. I couldn't stand that." Kurogane munches absently.

"I don't want to constantly remind them of the past, either. They should get on with their lives."

"Yeah."

"Also, Clow is very hot." Kurogane just looks at him and Fai blushes and slurps his noodles, which really doesn't help since Fai's pale face turns even more pink. "I know, I know, it's the least of my problems. We'll just have to visit."

"Sounds good to me. So what you're saying is, you're fine with settling here for the long haul." Kurogane prods him with a chopstick. "You like this world _that much_, do you?" Kurogane says wryly. He starts munching on the vegetables.

Fai looks at the table. "It _grows_ on you," he mutters. "It's a nice, all-around medium—best of all worlds. And it's just the right temperature." Fai finishes off his noodles pretty quickly.

It's probably childish, but Kurogane finds it somewhat endearing that Fai is so sensitive to the climate.

Kurogane turns serious. "That's fine. I like this world too. The technology is convenient, but it's not impossible to understand, you know? There's still a reason behind everything. Watanuki explained the TV to me when I asked yesterday, for instance. People are still able to survive without their technology. I think on Piffle, and Outo, and a couple of other places, they didn't have a clue what to do without their gadgets."

Fai grins suddenly. "You were bothered by the high-tech places? Really? I never knew, er, noticed that." Fai uses his chopsticks to pick out the vegetables that he likes and takes his time nibbling them. "It just seemed like magic to me."

"I wouldn't say _bothered_. I adapted, didn't I? I just don't trust tech. It fails too easily, and it's easy to get dependent or reliant, it seems. I can trust simple things."

"I'd still say you're bothered." Fai's smile begins to fade. "But I never thought about it like that." Peering at Kurogane's face over his bowl, Fai drinks the remaining soup.

"That's because you think you can fix whatever you like with magic," Kurogane says tartly. "Whether you understand it or not."

Fai shrugs. That's not exactly true—going into a spelling blind is a dangerous waste of time—but he does have a lot more leeway to fix things because of his powers. But Kurogane doesn't need to know badly enough for Fai to need to correct him on this. Kurogane has never wanted to know before, either.

Kurogane drinks the last of his soup, and lowers his bowl. "Ready to go?"

"Yes." Fai rubs his hands together. Mokona peeps out of the bag now that the way is clear, swiveling her ears.

Kurogane pays the clerk and they exit the ramen house and walk back to Watanuki's shop at a slow amble—Kurogane makes a wrong turn somewhere, but Fai hardly notices as Kurogane checks their course. He'll know the way a little better next time.

* * *

_It was my intention, from the beginning_

_As if you could have been there;_

_And if that had been so, all would have been fine_

_But from now on, we can be sure of nothing._

__.__

_Who is it okay to hate? What is okay to push away?_

_Having left without a wave of your hand to say goodbye,_

_This may be hurting you even more than me._

__.__

_See now, for my heart has frozen over;_

_Only tears keep rolling, and falling down._

_Now look, for today we are each searching for our own light,_

_And as if it were a matter of course, w__e shall walk into tomorrow._

—remix of "Kazanagi," by Shikao Suga [translated]


	6. Chapter 5

**| Chapter 5 |**

* * *

Fai and Kurogane cross the threshold of wishing shop to the place where Watanuki awaited them. "You decided," Watanuki observes.

"Yes. We decided there were some livelihoods we would not take up while we lived here. Kurogane will not be a soldier or a martial arts instructor; I will not be a magician or an entertainer for a living."

"Then the price is paid." Watanuki scratches the back of his head. "Will you be all right here for another day, Fai?"

Fai edges closer to the shop, and puts his hand up to the invisible magical barrier. "Yes," he says, at length.

"Then come in." Watanuki ushers them inside. "What will you do instead?"

Fai and Kurogane shake their heads. "Not sure," they say.

"There's always school," says Watanuki. "You could learn a new profession at college."

"Hmm." Kurogane looks thoughtful.

"You can do it slowly. Take jobs and pay for school a little bit at a time," Watanuki suggests.

Kurogane nods, a little. "We'll look into it. But I have no idea what..."

"You'll find out," says Watanuki easily. "That's what college does, I'm told." He sneaks a glance at Shizuka, who has just gotten into college himself, to study chemistry; Shizuka, who is staring at the wall, doesn't respond, beyond a nearly absent, "Yes."

"Are you going back to work tomorrow?" Watanuki asks him.

"Yes." At the end of a long day, Shizuka is rather tired and drawn.

Watanuki regards him. "Would you prefer..."

"No," says Shizuka, a little sharply. "It's fine. I knew this time would end."

"All right." Watanuki backs down quietly.

* * *

Shizuka returns in the morning of the next day with Doumeki's journals safely packed in a leather satchel. Watanuki picks them up with trembling hands. When he throws a glance over his shoulder at the dark depths of the shop, Shizuka knows, as he had suspected, that he wants to be alone.

"Kurogane and Fai spoke to me on the way in and said they were coming back here for lunch," Shizuka tells him awkwardly. "I asked them not to bother you if you were reading."

"All right." Watanuki lays the journal down on the table, and paces restlessly. It feels like there is something he needs to do before he sits down with them.

Shizuka watches him with pain in his heart. He doesn't actually want to leave Watanuki alone with the journals. There's no telling how he would take Doumeki's words. But he knows Watanuki wouldn't want to be watched over like a hawk by Shizuka or anyone else.

Shizuka turns to go, but Watanuki stops him. "Shizuka, I've been thinking." Watanuki hesitates.

"What about?"

"About..." Watanuki touches his right eye, the greenish-gold one. Shizuka's great-grandfather's. "About this."

Shizuka shakes his head, confused. "I don't understand," says Shizuka.

"Doumeki and I shared sight, with this half of his eye. I think—it's yours, if you want it. I can share it with you. I found a spell recently that would let me do it. It will work with a descendant."

"Would you like that?" Shizuka asked.

Watanuki looked away, as if by doing so he wouldn't have to confront the strength of his own desires. "Yes. If you do."

"Why? Surely you're experienced enough with spirits, that..."

Watanuki touches his lips with two fingers, making the sign for silence. "True, it's not practical anymore, but I...I..."

Shizuka waited.

"I want to do it for you," Watanuki says at last. He can't explain it. His eye was an inextricable part of his relationship with Doumeki, one of the few parts of it that he could admit he treasured, that approached the sacred between them.  
Shizuka dimly perceives the significance of the offer, but he doesn't know what it means, so he can't take it. Not just yet.

"I see. Thank you." Shizuka bends slightly. "However, I must think on it." He glances at Watanuki, then the door, and then he is gone, like a puff of wind, or shadow passing by. He tears himself away before he can convince himself to stay.

His heart tells him that he is only delaying the inevitable, that he wants to accept and so that is what he will say in the end. But he refuses to listen to it. His head is telling him that there are still important questions to be answered, that there is a catch to this deal which must be found out.

For one, there are selfish reasons why Shizuka would want this in order to keep an eye on Watanuki. It might devastate their trust, instead of building it up. He needs to want this for the right reasons.

How did Doumeki justify it to himself, when he offered the gift? He probably didn't think. The only thing in his mind was Watanuki's well-being, and that alone; and it was necessary, so he did it. He did what had to be done. He was profoundly simple in that way, and that was also why Watanuki found him so unfathomable and stubborn. Shizuka is not sure he can accept the same gift with such a pure heart. There are times when power leads to possessiveness. But who would be possessing whom?

But the second, more integral question was: did Shizuka even want the relationship that Doumeki had with Watanuki? Or did he want something new? And thirdly, why would Watanuki want to offer?

But there was no guarantee that everything would be the same, after all, even with the eye. It was a puzzle.

It would probably be safest to refuse for now.

* * *

Kochoushu came in after that. She must have heard everything, but she appeared as if she had nothing to say; she simply went on with her chores, shelving books and organizing artifacts and papers. Watanuki sighs when he sees her. She's about to go out the door when he holds out his hand to stop her.

"Kochoushu. I haven't been giving you the due attention you need, or deserve," Watanuki says simply. "We need to talk."

After a moment of consideration, Kochoushu lets go of the front door handle and follows Watanuki to the clients' study.

"Whatever problem you had originally would have to be urgent for you to have come to me when you did," Watanuki explains when they are both seated. "I think we both know that the Sight was not your ultimate goal, only a means to the end. Possibly a key to your destiny. But that's a different kind of thing altogether."

Kochoushu shrugs, trying to look nonchalant.

"I think it's time you told me what it is," Watanuki says gravely. "Do you know?"

Kochoushu's eyes slide sideways. "I don't have the experience to tell you what exactly it is. I only know what I have observed." She plays with her fingers, lacing them together tightly.

"Sit down," Watanuki orders, gently but firmly. Kochoushu bows slightly and sits in the only available chair, which is across the table from Watanuki. Watanuki pours her some weak lukewarm green tea, then refills his own cup. Kochoushu stares at it, but doesn't drink. Watanuki sips a little, for the sake of form, then puts it down. Only then does Kochoushu copy him. Watanuki steeples his fingers. "So what is it that you have observed?"

Kochoushu's expression appears to tighten. "It was my cousin. We used to be close... She has been behaving strangely for a long time now. At first I thought she had been possessed, but now..." She looks out the window. Her brick-red eyes momentarily flash scarlet in the light.

"The Sight tells you that there is nothing acting on her directly," Watanuki interpreted quietly. "But that does not eliminate the possibility of the interference of a spirit."

Kochoushu nods fractionally, squeezing her hands on her lap. Her hair lifts at the slightest wind, appearing to fly. She appears a dark, brooding shadow as she crouches there.

"I will assist you in your investigation," says Watanuki, standing. "If your suspicions are correct, the spirit may not be one that you are prepared to deal with. The most difficult spirits to deal with often have the lightest touch, because they rely on the consent of the victim, and as such have very good persuasive ability, and a degree of trust. They create a compulsion or an enthrallment that is very hard to resist, and the best spirits play on the deepest desires of the victim, which is why it is so hard to break that spirit's hold. Am I wrong?"

"N-no. She's not possessed, so..." she stammers. "That sounds right, but..."

"Possession is also consent-based, but only initially, as the victim's mind rejects the manhandling of body and spirit and begins to reassert itself over time. It takes a surprising amount of energy to force the victim to succumb, so weak spirits' immediate goals after possession is in search of energy to feed, and in doing so they alert us to their presence... Still difficult to eradicate, but the cure needn't be delicate, and it is relatively easy to convince the victim to resist. Enthrallment is much more difficult to deal with and the victim may resist help as strongly as the spirit. Why were you surprised?"

"I didn't, um, think you would agree help me so easily. I wasn't really looking of help, either," Kochoushu says, embarrassed. "That was all I knew, so...well, I thought it was a dead end..." She runs her fingers through her hair, though there are no knots to untangle—her hair is always sleek and very, very straight; the gesture is purely nervous.

Watanuki smiles a little. "I, too, would have thought so, in my first few years of working at the shop. I did learn, time after time, and so will you. But that is why I thought I would ask." He purses his lips. "So, with that decided, would you mind telling me what exactly is wrong with your cousin?"

* * *

Kochoushu's cousin's name was Kuwako. Kuwako had a boyfriend for nearly a year who was sweet, but "troubled." One day he rode his bike into the ocean, and never came back. After he went missing for a few days his body was found at the base of a beach cliff.

Kuwako had tried to make herself believe it was an accident. Kochoushu wasn't entirely sure if this was denial or not. Everyone else was afraid that the worst had happened, and that it was what had gotten the better of Kuwako's boyfriend. And because it hurt too much—to think that the accident was just that, an accident, unanticipated, unfair, and undeserved—that was what they believed.

Only recently Kochoushu had found out, from a friend of Kuwako's, what had happened. Kuwako had kept the relationship secret, because if her mother knew the full extent of her boyfriend's "oddness," she would have freaked. But Kochoushu's cousin had wanted to be there for him, and that was how she had done it.

Kochoushu said Kuwako had stayed out that night after the funeral, and it had rained. Neither Kochoushu nor Kuwako's mother knew where Kuwako had gone, or what had happened. But when her cousin came back, soaking wet, she was very strange. She...well.

Kochoushu's cousin saw things that weren't there, spoke to someone Kochoushu couldn't see. Kuwako disappeared for hours to go off and do things by herself. She would promise to do things and forget them, make commitments and then skip them, intent on a promise to a person Kochoushu didn't know, to the exclusion of everyone else. That person consumed Kuwako's thoughts. She didn't care about anything or anyone at all. She was irrationally convinced that no one else understood her and what she felt. And she was getting sicker all the time. These days, she had a constant fever and couldn't even go to school. Her mother tried to keep Kuwako in the house, but Kuwako always found her way out...

"There was a promise?" says Watanuki, sharply.

Kochoushu nods, mute. There are unspilled tears in her eyes.

"Do you know the exact nature of that promise?"

Kochoushu shakes her head.

Watanuki breaths deeply. This sounded familiar. If it was what he suspected, well... "How long has this been going on?" he asks.

"Two months."

Watanuki turns that thought over in his head.

Kochoushu swallows, and asks, "What is it?" in a small voice.

Watanuki shakes his head, glum. "Nothing." Kochoushu slumps in her chair with a disappointed look on her face. Watanuki rests his chin on one hand.

Watanuki remembers the last time he encountered this type of spirit. When Watanuki was possessed, it had taken only two weeks for the sickness to take over. That was a rather depressing thought. Watanuki had not fought back at all. The spirit Watanuki had encountered was a stranger; given the story Kochoushu had told, this one had been a friend, and more than a friend, and would therefore be expected to have a greater hold over her. "Your cousin is a strong one," he says finally.  
Kochoushu stares at him.

"There's hope. She wants to live. She doesn't want to be convinced otherwise." That was Watanuki's interpretation. Hopefully the right one. "But we need to work fast to save her life."

"Save her life?" Kochoushu inhales sharply. She places her palms flat on the table. "What do we need to do?" she asks, desperate.

His reply, spoken low and dark, is: "Whatever is necessary."

She sits back, stunned. Kochoushu is unnerved, for somehow she knows deep in her bones that he means what he says about this of all things. A trickle of dread runs down her back. Watanuki's cold and bleak expression does not change as she stares at him. For the first time Kochoushu is really frightened for her cousin, not just uneasy.

Kochoushu wipes her eyes and in a broken voice she promises to do what she must and damn the consequences. She wishes to end the spirit connection to save her cousin's life.

Watanuki says, "I will hold you to that." And then he looks out the window.

He knows from the standpoint of the enthralled one that the very righteousness of one's savior is the hardest of all to forgive. Kochoushu's relationship with her cousin may not survive unscathed. If Kochoushu doesn't understand that already, then she is about to find out.

Watanuki had made the right choice all those years ago, but it was a near thing. The decision, made in a split second, had been based on a gut sense of guilt and an instinct for kindness that he could not ignore.

He's not sure when he began to accede that Doumeki had done the right thing. It had taken much time and healing to lay the grudge to rest, and the sick horror of that memory, like a deep scar, never faded. By the same token, Doumeki was extra cautious when crossing Watanuki on subjects more serious than snack choices and it was then that he began his habit of outwardly deferring to Watanuki even when he disagreed with him. When it came to Watanuki's life and health he would never compromise. Doumeki seemed to believe that he had used up all of Watanuki's forgiveness points, and truth be told, he should have been right.

But he hadn't been right, because Watanuki came to rely on Doumeki much more than before after the incident. Doumeki had proved his loyalty, even if he had gone against Watanuki's wishes. He could not be accused of not having Watanuki's best interests at heart, and it would have been foolish to throw that away.

Even though it was the "right thing," Kochoushu was not guaranteed a happy ending. Watanuki hoped she understood that. Not everything could be made better; there was a price to every wish. Watanuki wished for her sake that this consequence wasn't part of the price.

* * *

Watanuki gets up and calls Shizuka first thing. He picks up the phone and his kimono sleeve slips down; Watanuki rubs his wrist, where it is suddenly cold. The numbers are strangely heavy as he dials them, slowly dragging each number around in an arc. He remembers this was an old phone of Yuuko's. Shizuka calls it an antique.

Shizuka picks up, with accompanying soft static, probably from Watanuki's old phone. Watanuki clutches the phone, and turns his back to Kochoushu.

"I need your help," says Watanuki in a low voice.

Watanuki hears an office chair rolling back, a pen clattering to the desk. "Tell me what to do," says Shizuka immediately.  
So Watanuki tells him, and Shizuka writes down what is needed.

"It's Kochoushu," Watanuki murmurs, at the end.

"What?" Shizuka snaps to attention on the other end of the line.

"It's Kochoushu's true wish."

"She told you," he remarks with some surprise, and clears his throat.

"Mm. I thought it would take longer, too." Watanuki pauses, and takes a deep breath. "It's not good." He leans on the phone cradle.

"Do you need me to..." Shizuka trails off, but Watanuki knows what he was thinking of.

"No...!" he exclaims, too quickly. Watanuki doesn't want to put Shizuka into danger, and Shizuka offers to help him with too much as it is, while he is still untried, when this task carries a high risk that someone will be hurt.

Watanuki's own fears are delayed, but they were there, but in the quiet that follows his words, he sees them for what they are. The truth is, although he has the skills he needs to beat this foe, he doubts himself. He has succumbed once, and the problem had not ever, really, been about magical ability. The flaw lay within his own soul. If he succumbed, it would endanger Kochoushu, whom he has promised to help and protect. He cannot afford to. Yuuko and Doumeki together would strangle him from beyond the grave.

Shizuka is still waiting.

The truth was, though it kills him to admit it, he needs backup.

"Yes," Watanuki whispers. He clutches the phone and his heartbeat throbs in his ears as he chokes out, "Please come."

Somber silence settles over Shizuka's end. And then, quiet, "I'm coming. I'll be there at six."

"Thank you," Watanuki says faintly, before he can take back his request, and with a soft click, he replaces the receiver.  
He leans over the phone and shudders. Kochoushu is watching him miserably. He tries to relax. He can't, with that troubled gaze on him.

"How about another cup of tea?" he asks, forcing himself to smile as though nothing were wrong. Before Kochoushu can answer, he whisks into the kitchen to get said tea. If nothing else, the familiarity of the ritual should be comforting.

It is going to be a long afternoon.


End file.
